Théodore Dubois
He continued his predecessor's strictly conservative curriculum and was forced to retire early after a scandal erupted over the faculty's attempt to rig the Prix de Rome competition to prevent the modernist Maurice Ravel from winning.
Dubois studied the piano under Louis Fanart, the choirmaster of Reims Cathedral, and was a protégé of the mayor of Rosnay, Vicomte Eugène de Breuil, who introduced him to the pianist Jean-Henri Ravina.
[1] Between his studies he visited the monuments of Rome and the surrounding countryside, attended the musical performances of the Sistine Chapel, and made trips to Naples, Pompeii, Venice, Verona, Mantua, Milan and Florence.
[4] When Camille Saint-Saëns and Romain Bussine established the Société nationale de musique in 1871, Dubois was a founding member together with, among others, Henri Duparc, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Ernest Guiraud and Massenet.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 he joined the National Guard; his biographer Hugues Imbert records, "it was in military uniform that he and Saint-Saëns often met at the église de la Madeleine, one to lead the chapel choirs, the other to ascend to the great organ".
At the old Théâtre Athénée his one-act La Guzla de l'Emir (The Emir's Lute), with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, was successfully given in 1873 in a triple bill with short operas by Jean Gregoire Penavaire and Paul Lacôme.
[4][11] In 1878 he shared with Benjamin Godard, the prize at the Concours Musical instituted by the city of Paris, and his Paradis perdu (Paradise Lost) was performed, first at the public expense November 1878), and again on the two following Sundays at the Concerts du Châtelet.
[12] In 1879 Dubois had an opera staged in one of the major Parisian houses: the Opéra Comique presented his one-act comedy Le Pain bis in February.
[4] Les Annales du théâtre et de la musique found the score unpretentious and "not without wit and or skill", and though not particularly original, nonetheless very elegant, with some excellent melodies.
It opened at the Théâtre Italien in the Place du Châtelet and was enthusiastically received,[19] but closed after four performances when a financial crisis forced the theatre out of business, leaving Dubois with personal liabilities to pay the singers' outstanding wages.
[20] After the death of Charles Gounod in 1894 Dubois was elected to succeed him as a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, a recognition, according to his biographer Jann Pasler, of "the clarity and idealism of his music".
[26] In June 1905 Dubois was forced to bring his planned retirement forward after a public scandal caused by the faculty's blatant attempt to stop Ravel winning the Prix de Rome.
His fascination with Near-Eastern subjects led to the composition to his first staged work, La guzla de l'émir, and his first four-act opera, Aben-Hamet.
The latter received excellent notices, for the cast (led by Emma Calvé and Jean de Reszke) and the work, but it did not gain a place in the regular repertoire.
