Isabelle Aboulker facts for kids

Isabelle Aboulker (born October 23, 1938) is a talented French composer. She is famous for writing operas and other music that uses singing. She won important awards for her many musical pieces, including a prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1999 and a music prize in 2000.

Early Life and Musical Journey

Isabelle Aboulker was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb near Paris, France. Her father, Marcel Aboulker, was a film director and writer from Algeria. Her grandfather, Henry Février, was also a composer.

Studying Music in Paris

Isabelle studied music at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris. She learned about composing music and playing keyboard instruments. While she was still a student, she began writing music for plays, movies, and television shows.

Teaching and Composing

After her studies, Isabelle Aboulker worked at the Conservatoire. She was a main accompanist, which means she played piano for singers. She also taught voice lessons. She wrote several educational books about music. In 1980, she started focusing on writing operas and many other pieces for singers.

Composing for Young Audiences

Isabelle Aboulker has a special talent for writing music that children love. She creates pieces that appeal to young people or that children can perform themselves.

Musical Fables and Fairy Tales

One example is Les Fables enchantées (2004). This work is based on the famous stories by Jean de la Fontaine. She has also written music inspired by classic fairy tales. These include Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Tom Thumb (Petit Poucet).

Works for Adults

Isabelle Aboulker also composes for adults. She has written two operas based on plays by Eugène Ionesco. She has also set poems by Guillevic and Charles Cros to music.

Special Commissions

In 1998, the Orchestre de Picardie asked her to write a special musical piece called L'Homme qui titubait dans la guerre. This piece was created to remember the 80th anniversary of the end of World War I. It was later chosen to represent France when Weimar became a European city of culture in 1999.

To celebrate 200 years since the birth of Honoré de Balzac, she was asked to write a comic opera. This opera, called Monsieur de Balzac fait son théâtre, was performed at the Grand Théâtre in Tours.

Caprice étrange Song Cycle

In 2011, a classical music album called Troika was released. It includes Isabelle Aboulker's song cycle Caprice étrange. A song cycle is a group of songs meant to be performed together. These songs use poems written in French by 19th-century Russian poets like Mikhail Lermontov, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Fyodor Tyutchev.