Biography
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy (27 May 1799 – 17 March 1862), was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.
Halévy was born in Paris as Elias Levy, the son of a cantor, Élie Halfon Halévy, who was the secretary of the Jewish community of Paris, a writer and a teacher of Hebrew, and a French Jewish mother. The name Fromental, by which he was generally known, reflects that he was born on the feast-day of that name in the French Revolutionary calendar, which was still operative at that time. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris at the age of nine or ten (accounts differ), in 1809, becoming a pupil and later protégé of Cherubini. After two second-place attempts, he won the Prix de Rome in 1819.
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With his opera La Juive, in 1835, Halévy attained not only his first major triumph, but gave the world a work that was to be one of the cornerstones of the French repertory for a century, with the role of Eléazar one of the great favorites of tenors such as Enrico Caruso.
Halévy died in retirement at Nice, leaving his last opera, Noé, unfinished. It was completed by his son-in-law, and former student, Georges Bizet, but was not performed until 10 years after Bizet's own death.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.