Biography
Mehul launched his musical path first by apprenticing to the town organist and then by enrolling at the music school founded by the same musician’s successor. Relocating to Paris, he devoted himself to rigorous composition and produced a volume of keyboard sonatas. A contest mounted by the Paris Opera prompted him to create his earliest comic opera, the genre in which his reputation would be established. The same event introduced him to librettist Francois-Benoit Hoffman. Their initial joint work, Euphrosine, enjoyed immediate popularity and remained in steady performance for more than forty years. Although many of his operas met with limited success, the overtures usually fared well, directing his energies toward symphonic composition. The Bourbon restoration removed him from his post at the Paris Conservatoire, and tuberculosis ended his life in 1817. In addition to his accomplishments in comic opera and the symphony, Mehul advanced orchestration by introducing stopped horn notes and subdivided strings, techniques that soon entered everyday orchestral practice.