Charles-Gaston Levadé

Charles-Gaston Levadé (3 January 1869 – 27 October 1948) was a French composer. A pupil of Jules Massenet, Grand Prix de Rome in 1863, Levadé wrote chamber music, melodies, religious music, drama and opéras comiques. He was very successful in his time. Life Levadé was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. At the age of 13 he entered the Conservatoire de Paris where he followed the solfège classes of Albert Lavignac, Charles de Bériot, Georges Mathias, and Auguste Bazille. A few years later, at Lavignac’s that he met Erik Satie who dedicated one of his Ogives and one of his Gymnopédies to him. He was a student of Jules Massenet, of whom he wrote in 1911, in the Annales politiques et littéraires, 17 December 1911: After Massenet’s resignation in 1896, Levadé attended the classes of Charles Lenepveu and obtained the Grand Prix de Rome in 1899 with his cantata Callirhoe to a text by Eugène Adénis. In 1895 he produced a Japanese pantomime: Coeur de magots, a “sketch” given at the “Grand Guignol” in 1897, and a “salon opera” in 1903. He wrote a three-act opera: The Heretics, a lyrical tragedy on a poem by Ferdinand Hérold. In 1908, he composed the music for La Courtisane de Corinthe,