Victor Rifaut

Victor Rifaut (11 January 1799 – 2 March 1838) was a French musician of the first half of the 19th century specialising in opéra comique.

A composer of the second order, he rubbed shoulders with masters of the genre such as Auber and Adolphe Adam and often collaborated with them.

On his return to Paris in 1824, he resumed his job as accompanist at the Théâtre of the Opéra-Comique before being appointed head of singing and pianist répétiteur there two years later.

In 1833, after the departure of Fromental Halévy, he was invited to take the "harmony and practical accompaniment class for women at the Conservatoire de Paris", and held this position until his untimely death by illness on 2 March 1838.

The most accomplished ("Graceful and light but wise music" writes the Journal des Demoiselles [fr];[3] "A rather pretty little act" writes a critic of L'Artiste: journal de la littérature et des beaux-arts[4]) seems to have been André, ou La Sentinelle perdue, a one-act play with a libretto by Saint-Georges, performed at the Opéra-Comique on 9 December 1834, with his wife in one of the female roles.