Augusta Holmès

Holmès was born in Paris, the only child of Charles William Scott Dalkeith Holmes (17 July 1797 - 19 December 1869), originally from Youghal, Ireland, and Tryphina Anna Constance Augusta Shearer (1811–1858).

[5] Camille Saint-Saëns wrote of Holmès in the journal Harmonie et Mélodie: "Like children, women have no idea of obstacles, and their willpower breaks all barriers.

Both works make use of chromaticism and use similar orchestral colour, with dominant brass sections, announcing strong, rhythmically catching, melodic motives, while the strings drive the music forward with rapid, galloping patterns underneath the melody.

It was one of the few operas written by a woman to be produced at the Paris Opéra in the nineteenth century, but it was poorly received, possibly due to its outdated Wagnerian influences.

[6] The gender rhetoric of the nineteenth century, which prescribed that female composers should limit themselves to smaller, feminine genres, had an impact on the reception towards the music of Holmès.