Henri Rabaud

French composer, conductor>, and administrator. He was the grandson of the celebrated flautist Louis Dorus and his father was a professional cellist. A pupil of Massenet and Gedalge , he showed prodigious talent as a student and remained faithful to his teachers' 19th-century ideals all his life. His greatest successes as a composer were the oratorio Job ( 1900 ) and his opera Mârouf, savetier de Caire ( 1914 ); he wrote five other operas, symphonies, and film scores, his style appropriately dubbed ‘advanced Wagnerianism’. He frequently conducted at the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, but his main influence on French music was exerted, perhaps, by his prolonged spell as director of the Paris Conservatoire ( 1922 – 41 ), where he succeeded Fauré .