Ernest Henri Alexandre Boulanger (16 September 1815 – 14 April 1900) was a French composer of comic operas and a conductor. He was more known, however, for being a choral music composer, choral group director, voice teacher, and vocal contest jury member.
Boulanger was born into a Parisian musical family. His father, Frédéric Boulanger, who left the family when Ernest was only a small child,[1] was a cellist and professor of singing 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.[2] 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.[3] [4]
At the age of 19, Boulanger was awarded the Grand Prix de Rome in 1835 with his cantata "Achille".[5] 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 Marquise's Clogs"), which premiered in 1854 at the Opéra-Comique. In 1871, he became professor of singing at the conservatory. In 1870, he was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. In 1881, he was appointed to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Within the cultural circles of Paris, Boulanger was an associate of Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Camille Saint-Saëns and William Bouwens.[6]
Boulanger met his wife Raissa Mychetsky (née Mychetskaya; 1856–1935), 41 years his junior, in Saint Petersburg. She was a Russian princess who descended from St. Mikhail Chernigovsky,[7] and Boulanger was her voice teacher.[8] They married in 1877 and moved to Paris where they had two children, the teacher and composer Nadia Boulanger;[9] and composer Lili Boulanger.[10] Like their father, Nadia and Lili both competed in the Prix de Rome, Nadia taking second place in 1908, and Lili earning the first place in 1913.