Daniel Auber
He 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.
[5] Although his father encouraged his musical talent, Auber expected to go into the family's print-selling business, and after the Treaty of Amiens (1802) ended the war between France and Britain he went to London to study commerce and learn English.
[5] An earlier biographer, Charles Malherbe, writes that although 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.
[4] In 1803 the fragile peace between France and Britain ended; the Napoleonic Wars began, and Auber left London for Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life.
[5] There, he was admitted to the Société académique des Enfants d'Apollon, a prestigious association of musicians and music-loving painters, of which his father had been a member since 1784.
[9] Among Auber's compositions from this period were five cello concertos premiered by the soloist Lamare, in whose name at least three of them were originally published, although their real authorship soon emerged.
Luigi Cherubini, the dominant figure in Parisian operatic circles, was in the audience, and recognising the powerful though untrained talent of the young composer, he took him as a private pupil.
[n 2] It was given by the Opéra-Comique company at the Salle Feydeau in January 1823 with Antoine Ponchard and Antoinette Lemonnier in the leading roles, and received 60 performances over the next five seasons.
[5] In 1829 Auber was elected as one of the six members of the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France in succession to François-Joseph Gossec, joining the joint doyens, Cherubini and Jean-François Le Sueur, and their colleagues Henri Berton, François-Adrien Boieldieu and Charles Catel.
[23] During his 42 years as a member he was joined by composers including Adolphe Adam, Hector Berlioz, Charles Gounod and Ambroise Thomas.
[27] Several winners of the Prix de Rome – France's premier music prize – trained under him, including Georges Bizet, Ernest Guiraud, Théodore Dubois and Jules Massenet.
After Scribe's death in 1861, Auber composed only two more operas, both with librettos by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon: Le premier jour de bonheur (The First Day of Happiness, 1868) and Rêve d'amour (Dream of Love, 1869).
[31] Under the Second Empire Auber was appointed director of the chapelle impériale by Napoleon III in 1852,[19] and composed a considerable amount of music for the emperor's chapel in the Louvre.
[33] He 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.
[5] The musicologist Hugh Macdonald writes of Auber, "With Adolphe Adam, he took on the mantle of Adrien Boieldieu and Ferdinand Hérold, and passed it on in turn to Ambroise Thomas and Jacques Offenbach".
[20] Macdonald judges the finest of the Auber-Scribe collaborations to be La Muette de Portici, "a grand opera that served as a model for the Meyerbeerian genre".
[37] Letellier comments on Auber's sensitivity to the French language "celebrating with wit and piquancy the natural inflections and nuances of the text that Scribe could so effortlessly provide".
[29] The composer's operatic music is noted for the brilliance of coloratura passages for chorus as well as soloists, and the quantity of ensemble writing, particularly in the finales to acts.
[40] Auber's orchestration, which reflects the influence of his friend Rossini, became the model for French operatic compositions throughout the 19th century, including those of Bizet and Massenet.
[5] In addition to his liturgical music, Auber wrote a substantial number of secular choral or other vocal works, including cantatas to commemorate the wedding of Napoleon III and other events of imperial or national importance.
