Pasdeloup, Jules Etienne

1819-1887

Celebrated French conductor; born at Paris. He studied at the Paris Conservatory in piano with Laurent and Zimmermann, and won the first prize in 1834. He was accorded first prize for solfege in 1832, and in 1841 had a class in singing. Having studied harmony under Dourlen and Carafa, he taught a piano class from 1847 to 1850. In 1848 he was appointed by the government to a position at St. Cloud, but often directed the concerts at the Louvre, and in 1851 organized and took direction of Societe des Jeunes artistes. In 1861 he removed to the Cirque d'hiver and the Cirque Napoleon, where concerts were held every Sunday afternoon, the famous Concerts Populaires, which proved so successful. There the French public were for the first time able to hear the music of the great classical and modern composers at a popular price. Between 1855 and 1868 Pasdeloup taught a vocal class at the Conservatory, and then for a little more than a year he tried with poor success to conduct the Theatre Lyrique, bringing out for the first time in Paris a Wagner opera, Rienzi. Gradually the finances of the Concerts Populaires were weakened by the excessive demands of the soloists and the tax collectors. Then Colonne and Lamoureux started their concerts, and Pasdeloup's audiences fell off so much that in 1884 the Concerts Populaires had to be abandoned. After a benefit festival held at Trocadero, bringing M. Pasdeloup nearly twenty thousand dollars, he retired, but, not satisfied with inaction, he gave concerts at Monte Carlo the next winter and later at the Conservatory. Then, in 1886 and 1887, Pasdeloup made a last and futile attempt to regain his lost place. Soon after this hopeless failure, deserted by the public which he had done so much to educate, he died at Fontainebleau.