Ernest Boulanger (composer)

Ernest Henri Alexandre Boulanger (16 September 1815 – 14 April 1900) was a French composer and conductor. He was known for being a composer of choral music and comic operas, a choral group director, a voice teacher, and also judged at voice contests. was a cellist and professor of voice 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. His mother, Marie-Julie Halligner, was a mezzo-soprano at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique in Paris. He was a pupil at the Paris Conservatory where he studied under Jean-François Le Sueur, and Fromental Halévy. He studied piano with the virtuoso pianist Charles-Valentin Alkan; and operatic composition with Daniel Auber and Ferdinand Hérold. At the age of 19, Boulanger was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1835 with his cantata “Achille”. In 1842, he began making a name as a composer of comic operas and as a conductor. Boulanger composed a dozen comic operas between 1842 and 1877. His chief work was the three-act opera Don Quixote, which premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in 1869; the most performed of his works was the one-act Les Sabots de la marquise (“The