Clay, Frédéric Emes (1838–1889)

English composer. He wrote light operas and the cantata Lalla Rookh (1877), based on a poem by Thomas Moore.

He was born in Paris, France, and studied under Wilhelm Molique and Moritz Hauptmann in Leipzig, Germany. He began by writing light operas for amateurs 1859–60, but produced Court and Cottage at Covent Garden in London, England, in 1862.

Works Stage light operas Princess Toto, Don Quixote (1876), The Merry Duchess (1883), The Golden King, and others; incidental music for Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Cantatas The Knights of the Cross and Lalla Rookh (Moore; 1877), the latter including the song ‘I'll Sing Thee Songs of Araby’.

Songs ‘She Wandered Down the Mountainside’, ‘The Sands of Dee’.