Charles SILVER

Russian in origin and the son of a commercial traveller, Charles Silver – born in Paris – had to apply for French naturalisation before being allowed to enter the Prix de Rome for musical composition. He had enrolled in the Paris Conservatoire in 1886, studying under Théodore Dubois for harmony and Jules Massenet for composition, winning the Premier Prix de Rome in 1891 with his cantata L’Interdit, after becoming a French citizen in 1889. Apart from the works he wrote at the Villa Medici (an overture entitled Bérénice that was to be performed at the Institut in 1895 and the opera La Belle au bois dormant which was not premiered until 1902, in Marseille), his first opus numbers were mélodies and patriotic songs (including En avant! to a text by Paul Déroulède). He nevertheless managed to carve out a niche for himself in the leading Parisian concert programmes with several works premiered at the turn of the century: Rapsodie sicilienne (Concerts Lamoureux, 1899) and Poème carnavalesque (Monaco, 1906, composed at the Villa Medici). Married to the singer Georgette Bréjean (a popular interpreter of Massenet’s Manon at the end of the 1890s), Silver also devoted himself to writing lyric works: Le Clos (premiered in 1907 at the Opéra-Comique); Neigilde (a ballet with singing premiered in Monte Carlo in 1909); Myriane (a drame lyrique premiered in  Nice in 1913); La Mégère apprivoisée (premiered at the Paris Opéra in 1922); and finally La Grand-Mère (1930) and Quatre-Vingt-Treize (1936). Appointed professor of harmony at the Paris Conservatoire in 1919 after the death of Lavignac, he was made a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in 1926.