Louis Antoine Jullien - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

LOUIS ANTOINE JULLIEN (1812-1860), musical conductor, was born at Sisteron, Basses Alpes, France, on the 23rd of April 1812, and studied at the Paris conservatoire. His fondness for the lightest forms of music cost him his position in the school, and after conducting the band of the Jardin Turc he was compelled to leave Paris to escape his creditors, and came to London, where he formed a good orchestra and established promenade concerts. Subsequently he travelled to Scotland, Ireland and America with his orchestra. For many years he was a familiar figure in the world of popular music in England, and his portly form with its gorgeous waistcoats occurs very often in the early volumes of Punch. He brought out an opera, Pietro it Grande, at Covent Garden (1852) on a scale of magnificence that ruined him, for the piece was a complete failure. He was in America until 1854, when he returned to London for a short time; ultimately he went back to Paris, where, in 1859, he was arrested for debt and put into prison. He lost his reason soon afterwards, and died on the 14th of March 1860.