Alfred Bachelet

Alfred Bachelet (Paris, 1864 – Nancy, 1944) was a French composer whose work stood between the academic tradition of Paris and an admiration for Wagner. Trained under Guiraud at the Paris Conservatoire, he won the Prix de Rome in 1890 and served first as chorus master and later as orchestral conductor at the Paris Opéra. In 1919 he succeeded Ropartz as head of the Nancy conservatoire, and in 1929 he filled the seat that Messager had vacated at the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

From an early age he was drawn to programme music on a large orchestral scale. Some excerpts from unfinished projects were performed around 1900, with a measure of success. Many critics regarded him as a French Wagnerian; today he is remembered above all for his operas, although instrumental pieces such as the Ballade for violin and orchestra and his Nocturne achieved a certain popularity.

His first opera, Scemo, set in Corsica, was premiered on the eve of the First World War. Its extensive and sumptuous score, close in style to Richard Strauss, failed to win over the critics either at the premiere or at the revival of 1926, although Dukas and Hahn praised the music. Quand la cloche sonnera, a one-act work, tells of a young woman who rings the church bell so that soldiers will blow up a bridge, even though she knows her lover is waiting beneath it. His last opera, Un jardin sur l'Oronte, was his most successful: it recounts the love between an eastern princess and a Christian invader, with a pastiche of Oriental and medieval music.

Bachelet was also an active conductor; he made his debut at the Paris Opéra in 1907 with Gounod's Faust. His legacy lies in his operas, choral works, songs and chamber music, which reflect the transition of French music from the late nineteenth century into the twentieth.