28 Facts About Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was a French composer and director of the Paris Conservatoire.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber soon established a professional partnership with the librettist Eugene Scribe that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas, most of them commercial and critical successes.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber is mostly associated with opera-comique and composed 35 works in that genre.

Devotee of Paris, Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber refused to leave the city when the Franco Prussian War led to the siege of Paris and the subsequent rise of the Paris Commune.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber died in his house in Paris, aged 89, shortly before the French government regained control of the capital.

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Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber's grandfather had been "peintre du Roi" – the king's painter – responsible for sculpting and gilding the royal coaches, and Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber's father, Jean-Baptiste Daniel, was an officer of the royal hunt, based at the "petites ecuries du Roi" – the king's small stables – in the Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris.

When Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was seven the French Revolution began, and his father had to find another occupation to allow him to go on providing for his family.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber set up as a publisher, and opened a print shop in the rue Saint-Lazare, where he survived the Reign of Terror and prospered under the Directory and the Consulate.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber had a salon, attended by artists of all kinds, where the young Auber sometimes performed: he was, by his teens, an accomplished violinist, pianist and singer.

In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Charles Schneider writes that Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber evidently had some success in London as a performer and as a composer.

An earlier biographer, Charles Malherbe, writes that although Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber did not gain any great insight into trade and finance during his sixteen months in London, he admired and emulated British reserve and understatement, which suited his own innate modesty.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber never appeared before the public as a conductor, and throughout his career he was too nervous to attend his own first nights.

In 1803 the fragile peace between France and Britain ended; the Napoleonic Wars began, and Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber left London for Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life.

The orchestra consisted of two violins, two violas, cello, and double-bass, but Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber made effective use of the small forces, and the piece was well received.

In 1822 Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber began a collaboration with the librettist Eugene Scribe that lasted for 41 years and produced 39 operas.

Schneider writes that Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber consolidated his international reputation with La Fiancee and Fra Diavolo, both with Scribe.

In 1829 Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was elected as one of the six members of the Academie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France in succession to Francois-Joseph Gossec, joining the joint doyens, Cherubini and Jean-Francois Le Sueur, and their colleagues Henri Berton, Francois-Adrien Boieldieu and Charles Catel.

Under the government of King Louis-Philippe, Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was appointed director of court concerts in 1839, and, when Cherubini retired in 1842, director of the Conservatoire.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was a much-loved and conscientious director of the Conservatoire; he ran a less conservative regime than his predecessor, and introduced changes such as permitting applause at Conservatoire concerts, and giving members of the faculty more freedom in what they taught their students.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber enlarged the composition, piano and orchestral instrument departments.

Under the Second Empire Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was appointed director of the chapelle imperiale by Napoleon III in 1852, and composed a considerable amount of music for the emperor's chapel in the Louvre.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber refused to leave Paris, and remained there during the siege of Paris and the subsequent rise of the Paris Commune.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber resigned as director of the Conservatoire so that the building could be used as a hospital.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber was briefly succeeded as director by Francisco Salvador-Daniel – appointed by the Communards and shot by the French government eleven days later – and more permanently by Ambroise Thomas, who held the post from 1871 to 1896.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber's health deteriorated and in May 1871 he took to his bed.

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Total number of operas or other stage works by Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber given by various sources differs slightly, depending on whether collaborations with other composers are included.

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber adds that although the influence of Rossini is detectable, there are chromatic touches that anticipate Smetana, who was composing 30 years after Auber.

Letellier lists the vocal genres the Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber introduced into his scores: the ballad, the barcarolle, the bolero, the canon, the Bourbonnaise, the chanson, the couplet, the galop, the nocturne, the round, the Tyrolienne and the waltz song.