Frédéric Barbier (composer)

Frédéric Barbier (15 November 1829 – 12 February 1889) was a 19th-century French composer. Biography Frédéric Barbier was born in Metz, Lorraine, and was the son of Félix Henri Barbier and Adélaide Josephine Rosalie Rousseau. Barbier pursued a career in literary studies at Bourges College, while taking lessons in solfège, piano, harmony and counterpoint with Henry Darondeau, an organist in one of the churches of the city. His father, an engineer officer, wanted to see him join the École Polytechnique, of which he himself had been a pupil. But in 1848, the De Gasperi V Cabinet had created a new school, and the young Barbier preferred to compete for the latter and was admitted. This school was disbanded soon after and he began to study law. But music attracted him more and more. In 1852, Frédéric Barbier had already written and presented in Bourges a small one-act opéra comique, Le Mariage de Colombine, but considered moving to Paris. Presented by influential figures to Edmond Seveste, then director of the Théâtre Lyrique, he met Adolphe Adam. Thanks to his advice and lessons of the latter, his first work Une Nuit à Séville, a one-act opéra comique, was played at the Théâtre Lyrique