Occupation Composer | ||
Born 15 November 1829 Metz Spouse(s) Alexandrine Marie Laubier Died 12 February 1889, Paris, France | ||
Frédéric Barbier (15 November 1829 – 12 February 1889) was an 19th-century French composer.
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Biography
The son of Felix Henri Barbier and Adelaide Josephine Rosalie Rousseau, Frédéric Barbier followed literary studies at Bourges College, while taking lessons in solfège, piano, harmony and counterpoint with Henri Darondeau, then an organist in one of the churches of the city. His father, an engineer officer, wanted to see him join the École Polytechnique of which he himself had been a pupil. But in 1848, the De Gasperi V Cabinet had created a new school, called of administration, and the young Barbier preferred compete for the latter, and was admitted. This school was disbanded soon after and he began to study law. But music attracted him more and more.
In 1852, Frédéric Barbier had already written and presented in Bourges a small one-act opéra comique, Le Mariage de Colombine but considered moving to Paris. Presented by influential figures to Edmond Seveste, then director of the Theatre Lyrique, he met Adolphe Adam. Thanks to his advice and lessons of the latter, his first work Une nuit à Séville, one-act opéra comique, was played at Théâtre-Lyrique 14 September 1855 and warmly welcomed. Two months later, on 21 November, Frédéric Barbier gave the same theater a new work in one act entitled Rose et Narcissus, also welcomed.
Within 20 years, he had over sixty more or less important works presented in every small opera houses of Paris and in cafés-chantant, most of them in one act and approaching more and more the kind of comic operetta. He composed for the Eldorado, the Alcazar, the Ba-ta-clan, the Folies-Belleville, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, etc., a great many number of operettas, saynètes, pantomimes and ballets.
Besides his opera production, Barbier wrote about 300 duets, romances, vocal melodies, ditties, many dance music pieces for piano, concert marches and orchestral fantasies on opera motifs, choirs for men voice, galops, valses, mazurkas, polkas, etc. In 1867, he was conductor at Théâtre-International, and from 1873 he directed the orchestra at l'Alcazar d'Été, a position he shared with Henry Litolff. He collaborated as a critic to some small newspapers such as l'Avenir musical (1853) and l'Indépendance dramatique.