Gabriel Charpentier

Biography

Sample Works

GABRIEL CHARPENTIER was born in Richmond, Québec in 1925. He studied music with Jean Papineau-Couture, the Benedictines of the Saint-Benoît-du-Lac Abbey, Annette Dieudonné and Nadia Boulanger.

From 1953 to 1980, in addition to his responsibilities as programme coordinator and artistic consultant for musical shows on CBC French-language television (Montréal, from 1959 to 1972), he became music director for the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and wrote the music for its productions of Venise sauvée (Lebesque), Richard II, La Nuit des rois (Shakespeare), Le Soulier de satin (Claudel), Les Choéphores (Aeschylus), Rhinocéros (Ionesco), etc.

Over a period of years he also wrote music for the Stratford productions of Cymbeline, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, Pericles, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus (Shakespeare), The Duchess of Malfi (Webster), Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Tartuffe, and Le Malade imaginaire (Molière).

For the St. Lawrence Theatre in Toronto, he composed the music for Galileo Galilei (Brecht), Electra (Euripides), and for the Tarragon Theatre, music for Damnée Manon, sacrée Sandra (Tremblay).

Charpentier was Pierre Mercure's poet for Dissidence and Cantate pour une joie, and translated R. Murray Schafer's Toi/Loving and Beauty and the Beast. He is also the author of a cycle of musical theatre works that continues to grow and includes Claracello, ou Répertoire, Clara et les Philosophes, An English Lesson, or Clara-Teacher, A Tea Symphony, or the Perils of Clara, and Clarabelle-Clarimage.

1988

CAPAC

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