Xavier Henry Napoleón Leroux (11 October 1863 – 2 February 1919) was a French

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

and a teacher at the Paris Conservatory. He was married to the famous soprano Meyrianne Héglon (1867–1942).

Life

Born in Italy at Velletri, 30 km south-east of Rome, Leroux was the son of a French military bandleader. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under

Jules Massenet Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther' ...

and Théodore Dubois, and won the Prix de Rome in 1885 with the cantata ''Endymion''. From 1896 he taught harmony there. Notable students include Eugène Bigot, Georges Dandelot,

Marc Delmas Marc Marie Jean Baptiste Delmas (28 March 188530 November 1931) was a French Expressionist composer and writer. Life and career Marc Delmas was born in Saint-Quentin, Aisne, France, and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Xavier Leroux ...

, Roger Désormière, Louis Fourestier, Henri Mulet, Paul Paray, Louis Vuillemin, and Albert Wolff. Leroux composed various orchestral and choral works, songs, and piano pieces, but he became known above all as a representative of naturalistic French opera. His masterpiece is the opera ''Le Chemineau'', which was staged six times at the

Opéra-Comique The Opéra-Comique is a Paris opera company which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with – and for a time took the name of – its chief rival, the Comédie-Italienne ...

between 1907 and 1945. Alfredo Casella dedicated his Symphony No. 1 in B minor, Op. 5 to him in 1905. Leroux was married to the Brussels-born soprano Marie-Antoinette Willemsen, who appeared under the pseudonym Meyrianne Héglon (1867–1942).

Selected works

Incidental music

*'' The Persians'' ( Aeschylus) *'' Plutus'' ( Aristophanes)

Operas

*''Evangéline'' ( Louis de Gramont) (1895) *'' Astarté'' (Louis de Gramont) (1901) *'' La reine Fiammette'' (1903) *''Vénus et Adonis'' (Louis de Gramont) (1905) *''William Ratcliff'' (Louis de Gramont after

Heinrich Heine Christian Johann Heinrich Heine (; born Harry Heine; 13 December 1797 – 17 February 1856) was a German poet, writer and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of '' Lied ...

) (1906) *''Le Chemineau'' (1907) *''Théodora'' (1907) *''Le Carillonneur'' (1913) *''La Fille de Figaro'' (1914) *'' Les cadeaux de Noël'' (1915) *''1814'' (1918) *''Nausithoé'' (1920) *''La Plus forte'' (1924) *''L'Ingénu'' (1931)

Others

*''Hymne'' (1914)

References

* Don Randel: ''The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music'' (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 499.

External links

* 1863 births 1919 deaths 19th-century French composers 19th-century French male musicians 20th-century French male musicians Academic staff of the Conservatoire de Paris Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Conservatoire de Paris alumni French male classical composers French music educators French opera composers French Romantic composers Male opera composers People from Velletri Prix de Rome for composition {{France-composer-stub