Adam, Adolphe (1803–56), French composer, who worked in the tradition of the Opéra Comique. Adam's musical compositions were influenced by François Auber and François‐Adrien Boieldieu. Among the 53 works that he produced, the most significant are the operas Le Postillon de Longjumeau (The Coachman of Longjumeau, 1836) and Si j'étais roi (If I Were King, 1852) and, above all, the ballet Giselle ou les Willis (1841), based on a story by Heinrich Heine that was adapted by Théophile Gautier and Vernoy de Saint‐Georges for the ballet. This fairy tale focuses on Albrecht, Duke of Schlesia, who falls in love with the peasant girl Giselle. When Giselle learns from Albrecht's companion that the duke is already engaged, she dances with him in great desperation and kills herself with his dagger. She is then received by Myrtha, the queen of the Willis, who commands her to return to her grave where Albrecht is mourning her death. There she is to entice him into a dance of death. However, just as he collapses, the end of the bewitching hour arrives, and Myrtha loses her power over him. Giselle must return to her grave, and Albrecht is left standing in despair. In another one of his plays, La Poupée de Nuremberg (The Doll of Nuremberg, 1852), Adam incorporated the motif of the mechanical doll that E. T. A. Hoffmann had created in his story ‘The Sandman’. In this comedy of mistaken identities, a life‐sized doll is supposed to be turned into an ideal wife through magic. However, the inventor's wife assumes the identity of the doll, tricks her husband, and is insolent towards him. In his anger he stabs the doll, but fortunately the inventor's wife does not die because she manages to switch identities with the lifeless doll before the inventor commits his ‘crime’.
— Thomas H. Hoernigk
