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Claude Debussy
Achille-Claude Debussy, more commonly known as Claude Debussy, was an emblematic French composer whose work served as a cornerstone for the music of the 20th century. His innovative approach to…
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Jean-Philippe Rameau
Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers of the 18th century. He is remembered for his work as a music theorist and composer of opera. Early Life…
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Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride – Operas by Christoph Gluck
From the Grand Théâtre de Provence, Dmitri Tcherniakov stages two of Gluck’s French operas in a single production where Iphigenia, the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, engaged in war against…
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Fernando Sor
…by patriotic lyrics. However, Sor’s resistance was short-lived. The defeat of the Spanish army saw Sor accepting an administrative position in the French government, earning him the label of an…
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Georges Bizet
Born into a family of musicians, Georges Bizet was a French composer whose music has become synonymous with the romantic era. Despite a life cut short by an early death,…
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Frédéric Chopin
…Warsaw (now Poland). His father, Nicholas, was a French émigré who was working as a bookkeeper, and his mother, Justyna, was a relative of the Skarbeks, a prominent Polish family….
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Erik Satie
Erik Alfred Leslie Satie, known after 1884 as Erik Satie, was an avant-garde French composer and pianist whose work set the stage for later musical movements such as minimalism, repetitive…
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Maurice Ravel
…Ravel honed his skills under the tutelage of Gabriel Fauré, a revered French composer. His time at the conservatoire was marked by a gradual but profound evolution in his musical…
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Gaetano Donizetti
…of operas, written in both Italian and French, and his work is widely recognized as a bridge between the styles of Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti’s operas are renowned…
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Igor Stravinsky
…tales. However, his most important work from this period was “The Wedding,” a ballet-cantata that combined Russian village wedding songs with Stravinsky’s unmistakable flair for modernist orchestration. The French Period:…
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Saint-Saëns – Danse Macabre
Danse Macabre is a composition by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, first performed in 1875. It is based on a poem by Henri Cazalis, which explores the old French superstition of…
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Fauré – Requiem, Op. 48 – Pie Jesu
Gabriel Urbain Fauré (1845-1924) was a renowned French composer, organist, pianist, and teacher. His influential musical style impacted many composers of the 20th century. Fauré’s mastery of the French art…