Xavier Leroux

French composer

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "Xavier Leroux" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2013) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

|

(Learn how and when to remove this message)

Xavier Leroux by Nadar

Xavier Henry Napoleón Leroux (11 October 1863 – 2 February 1919) was a French composer and a teacher at the Paris Conservatory. He was married to the famous soprano Meyrianne Héglon (1867–1942).

## Life

[edit]

Born in Italy at Velletri, 30 km south-east of Rome, Leroux was the son of a French military bandleader. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Jules Massenet and Théodore Dubois, and won the Prix de Rome in 1885 with the cantata Endymion. From 1896 he taught harmony there. Notable students include Eugène Bigot, Georges Dandelot, Marc Delmas, Roger Désormière, Louis Fourestier, Henri Mulet, Paul Paray, Louis Vuillemin, and Albert Wolff.

Leroux composed various orchestral and choral works, songs, and piano pieces, but he became known above all as a representative of naturalistic French opera. His masterpiece is the opera Le Chemineau, which was staged six times at the Opéra-Comique between 1907 and 1945.

The music critic of Le Monde, Jacques-Emmanuel Fousnaquer, points out that "between 1907 (the year of its creation) and 1945, [Le Chemineau] was performed over a hundred times at the Opéra-Comique, with equal success." It was revived at the Marseille Opera in January 1996, featuring Jean-Philippe Lafont and Martine Surais, directed by Henri Gallois.[1]

Alfredo Casella dedicated his Symphony No. 1 in B minor, Op. 5 to him in 1905.

Leroux was married to the Brussels-born soprano Marie-Antoinette Willemsen, who appeared under the pseudonym Meyrianne Héglon (1867–1942).

## Selected works

[edit]

### Incidental music

[edit]

* The Persians (Aeschylus)
* Plutus (Aristophanes)

### Operas

[edit]

* Evangéline (Louis de Gramont) (1895)
* Astarté (Louis de Gramont) (1901)
* La reine Fiammette (1903)
* Vénus et Adonis (Louis de Gramont) (1905)
* William Ratcliff (Louis de Gramont after Heinrich Heine) (1906)
* Le Chemineau (1907)
* Théodora (1907)
* Le Carillonneur (1913)
* La Fille de Figaro (1914)
* Les cadeaux de Noël (1915)
* 1814 (1918)
* Nausithoé (1920)
* La Plus forte (1924)
* L'Ingénu (1931)

### Others

[edit]

* Hymne (1914)

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Le Monde : [1]

* Don Randel: The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music (Cambridge, MA, 1996), p. 499.

## External links

[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Xavier Leroux.

* Free scores by Xavier Leroux at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)

Authority control databases

International|

* ISNI
* VIAF
* WorldCat

National|

* Germany
* United States
* France
* BnF data
* Czech Republic
* Spain
* Portugal
* Netherlands
* Norway
* Sweden
* Poland
* Israel
* Belgium

Artists|

* MusicBrainz
* Discography of American Historical Recordings

People|

* Trove
* Deutsche Biographie

Other|

* IdRef
* SNAC
* RISM

This article about a French composer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

|

* v
* t
* e

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template