Ernest Boulanger (composer)

Ernest Henri Alexandre Boulanger (16 September 1815 – 14 April 1900) was a French composer of comic operas and a conductor.

His father, Frédéric Boulanger, who left the family when Ernest was only a small child,[2] was a cellist and professor of singing at the Paris Conservatory, winner of the First Prize in cello at the Conservatory in 1797 and a professor of cello, attached to the King's Chapel.

He studied piano with the virtuoso pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan; and operatic composition with Daniel Auber and Ferdinand Hérold.

Within the cultural circles of Paris, Boulanger was an associate of Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns and William Bouwens [fr].

[7] Boulanger met his wife Raissa Mychetsky (née Mychetskaya; 1856–1935), 41 years his junior, in Saint Petersburg.