Biography
André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry was born in 1741 in the Prince-Bishopric of Liège (in present-day Belgium), the son of a poor musician, and trained there first as a choirboy and with local teachers. In 1759 he travelled to Rome, where he studied composition for five years under Giovanni Battista Casali, before reaching Paris in 1767 by way of Geneva, where he had met Voltaire. With a libretto by Jean-François Marmontel he achieved his breakthrough there in 1768 with “Le Huron,” establishing himself as a leading composer of opéra comique, followed by successes such as “Zémire et Azor” (1771) and “Richard Cœur de Lion” (1784). He wrote around fifty stage works and was later awarded the Legion of Honour by Napoleon. Grétry died in 1813 in Montmorency near Paris; his heart was transferred to Liège, where a bronze monument was erected in his honour in 1842.
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