Campra, André (1660-1744)

French composer. He held various provincial organist's posts and settled in Paris in 1694, when he was appointed music director at Notre-Dame, where his motets soon attracted large congregations. He became equally famous as a stage composer, bringing out about 40 dramatic works which earned him great fame and made a link between the work of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau. After many years of neglect, his works are now being revived and recorded.

He was born in Aix-en-Provence, where he learnt music at the church of Saint-Sauveur. His first stage work was the opera-ballet L'Europe galante (1697); his last was the opera Achille et Déidamie (1735).

Works Stage operas and opera-ballets L'Europe galante (1697), Le Carnaval de Venise (1699), Hésione, Tancrède, Iphigénie en Tauride (with Desmarets, 1704), Alcine, Hippodamie (1708), Les Festes vénitiennes, Idoménée (1712), Le Jaloux trompé, Achille et Déidamie (1735), and others; pasticcios Fragments de Lully and Télémaque (the latter with pieces by Charpentier, Colasse, Desmarets, Marais, and Rebel senior); entertainments Amaryllis, Les Festes de Corinthe, Le Génie de la Bourgogne, Les Noces de Vénus (1740), and others.

Other a Mass, cantatas, motets, and psalms.