Isabelle Aboulker

Isabelle Aboulker was born in 1938 under the concordant influences of a grandfather composer, Henry Février, and a father, Marcel Aboulker, who was both a film director and writer. In parallel with her studies in music theory and accompaniment at the Paris Conservatoire she composed for the cinema, the theatre and television. An accompanist, a choral director and subsequently teacher of singers at the Paris Conservatoire, she focussed her creative activity from 1981 on the voice and on opera. Attentive to prosody, demanding in the choice of libretti, she considers herself an heir to the French tradition of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc. The success of her first stage work Les Surprises de l’Enfer (1981) revealed her orientation: Leçons de français aux étudiants américains (1983), Trois folies d’opéra pour trois femmes compositeurs (1986), Cinq Nô Modernes (1992), La Lacune (1993), Monsieur Balzac fait son théâtre (1999), and Le Renard à l’opéra (2004). Aboulker is no less renowned for her operas for children. From Moi, Ulysse (1982, commissioned by Jean-Claude Malgoire for the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing) to Jérémy Fisher (2007, commissioned by the Debussy Quartet and Lyons Opera), her works Atchafalaya, Martin Squelette, Douce et Barbe Bleue, La Fontaine et le Corbeau, Les Fables Enchantées, and Les Enfants du Levant are frequently performed by conservatories and music schools, and they regularly appear in the youth programmes of the major French and foreign opera houses. Douce et Barbe Bleue and Les Fables Enchantées have been released as book-CDs by Gallimard Jeunesse. Aboulker has also composed, in the collection Écoutez-lire, several scores that accompany Le Petit Prince, Inconnu à cette adresse, and L’Ami retrouvé. In 1999 she was awarded a prize by the Académie des Beaux-Arts and in 2000 received the SACD music prize.