Isabelle Aboulker facts for kids
Isabelle Aboulker (born 23 October 1938) is a French composer. She is well-known for her operas and other musical pieces that feature singing. In 1999, she won a prize from the Académie des Beaux-Arts. The next year, in 2000, she received a music prize from the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques for her many beautiful vocal works.
Isabelle Aboulker's Life and Music
Isabelle Aboulker was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, a town near Paris, France. Her father, Marcel Aboulker, was a film director and writer from Algeria. Her grandfather, Henry Février, was also a composer. Music was clearly a big part of her family!
She studied composition and keyboard at a famous music school in Paris, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique. While she was there, she started writing music for plays, movies, and TV shows. Later, she worked at the Conservatoire as a main accompanist and a voice teacher. She also wrote several books to help people learn music. In 1980, she began focusing on writing operas and many other pieces for singers.
Music for Young People
Isabelle Aboulker has a special talent for creating music that appeals to children. She often writes pieces where kids can even take part! For example, in Les Fables enchantées (2004), children perform based on the famous fables by Jean de La Fontaine. She has also written music inspired by classic fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and Tom Thumb (Petit Poucet).
Works for Adults
Besides her children's music, Isabelle Aboulker has composed many pieces for adults. She wrote two operas based on plays by Eugène Ionesco. She also set poems by Guillevic and Charles Cros to music.
In 1998, she was asked to write a large musical piece called L'Homme qui titubait dans la guerre. This was to remember the 80th anniversary of the end of World War I. This work was chosen to represent France when Weimar became a special "European city of culture" in 1999. That same year, to celebrate 200 years since Honoré de Balzac's birth, she wrote a funny opera called Monsieur de Balzac fait son théâtre. This opera was for the Grand Théâtre in Tours.
Later Works
In 2011, a classical music album called Troika was released. It includes Isabelle Aboulker's song cycle Caprice étrange. This piece uses French poems written by Russian poets from the 1800s, like Mikhail Lermontov, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Fyodor Tyutchev.
