Background
Adolphe Adam was born in Paris, to Jean-Louis Adam (1758–1848), who was a prominent Alsatian composer, as well a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. His mother was the daughter of a physician.
Adolphe Adam was born in Paris, to Jean-Louis Adam (1758–1848), who was a prominent Alsatian composer, as well a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. His mother was the daughter of a physician.
As a child, Adolphe Adam preferred to improvise music on his own rather than study music seriously and occasionally truanted with writer Eugène Sue who was also something of a dunce in early years. Jean-Louis Adam was a pianist and teacher but was firmly set against the idea of his son following in his footsteps.
Adam was determined, however, and studied and composed secretly under the tutelage of his older friend Ferdinand Hérold, a popular composer of the day. When Adam was 17, his father relented, and he was permitted to study at the Paris Conservatoire but only after he promised that he would learn music only as an amusement, not as a career.
He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1821, where he studied organ and harmonium under the celebrated opera composer François-Adrien Boieldieu.
Adam also played the timpani in the orchestra of the Conservatoire; however, he did not win the Prix de Rome and his father did not encourage him to pursue a music career, as he won second prize.
In 1817 Adam entered the Conservatoire under the teaching of the composer Francois Boieldieu, who urged him to study the opéraopera comique form.
Adam wrote forty operas and operas comiques and many ballets, masses, cantatas, choruses, and songs.
He opened, on November 15, 1847, the Opera National, to be devoted to the presentation of works by young composers.
Giselle, for which he wrote the music, occupies an important place in the repertories of nearly all of the major ballet companies of the world, and his opéraopera comique, Le Postillon de Longjumeau, is still occasionally performed in Europe.
Adolphe Charles Adam wrote 70 operas, mostly opéras-comiques, of which best-known are Le Postillon de Longjumeau (1836) and Si j'étais roi (1852).
