Édouard Joseph Woolley (31 March 1916 – 22 December 1991) was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...

, and

music educator Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do origina ...

Haiti Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican ...

an birth. He became a naturalized Canadian citizen in 1958. His compositional output includes masses for three voices and for four voices, a few songs, and some instrumental pieces. The section "Mazoumbel" from his suite for violin and piano ''Sous les palmiers'' (c. 1958) was performed in a concert of Haitian music in Montreal in 1979.

Life and career

Born in

Port-au-Prince Port-au-Prince ( ; ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Haiti, most populous city of Haiti. The city's population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2022 with the metropolitan area estimated at a population of 2,618,894. The me ...

, Woolley began his studies in his native city with

Carmen Brouard Carmen Brouard (February 10, 1909 – December 11, 2005) was a Haitian-Canadian pianist, composer and music educator. She was considered the most accomplished Haitian composer of her time. The daughter of Raphaël Brouard, mayor of Port-au-Pr ...

(piano and harmony), Élisabeth de Pesquidoux-Mahy (singing), Werner Jaegerhuber (German opera/lieder), Raoul Nargys (acting), and Henriette Perret-Duplessis (singing). After working for a few years as a choirmaster at a church in Port-au-Prince, he moved to Montreal in 1938 at the age of 22 where he studied singing with Salvator Issaurel from the time of his arrival through 1944. He then entered the Conservatoire national de musique where he earned a

Doctor of Music The Doctor of Music degree (DMus, DM, MusD or occasionally MusDoc) is a doctorate awarded on the basis of a substantial portfolio of compositions, musical performances, and/or scholarly publications on music. In some institutions, the award is a ...

in 1947 after writing his thesis "La phonétique appliquée à l'art du chant". At the conservatoire he was an organ student of Eugène Lapierre and a piano pupil of Edmond Trudel. In 1942 Woolley made his professional opera debut as Antonin in

Reynaldo Hahn Reynaldo Hahn de Echenagucia (9 August 1874 – 28 January 1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs – ''mélodies'' – of which he wrote more than 100. Hahn was born ...

's '' Ciboulette'' at Les Variétés lyriques (LVL) in Montreal. That same year he began operating his own private voice studio which he ran for several decades. Among his notable students were

Joseph Rouleau Joseph A. Rouleau, (February 28, 1929 – July 12, 2019) was a French Canadian Bass (voice type), bass opera singer, particularly associated with the Italian and French repertoires. Life and career Born in Matane, Quebec, he studied privately w ...

and

André Turp André Turp (December 21, 1925, Montreal – February 25, 1991, Montreal) was a Canadian tenor, particularly associated with the French and Italian repertories. Life and career André Turp took private voice lessons with Édouard Woolley and Fra ...

. He was a principal artist at the LVL through 1947, spending five seasons performing leading roles in works like François Bazin's '' Le voyage en Chine'' and Oscar Straus's '' Drei Walzer''. During the 1940s through the 1960s he performed as a singer and actor on a variety of

CBC Radio CBC Radio is the English-language radio operations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The CBC operates a number of radio networks serving different audiences and programming niches, all of which (regardless of language) are outlined below ...

and

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

programs and appeared in supporting roles on the dramatic stage and in Canadian films. In 1948 Woolley founded the Opéra national du Québec, serving as the company's first artistic director through 1952. From 1967 until his retirement in 1981 he taught

art history Art history is the study of Work of art, artistic works made throughout human history. Among other topics, it studies art’s formal qualities, its impact on societies and cultures, and how artistic styles have changed throughout history. Tradit ...

at the

Cégep du Vieux Montréal Cégep du Vieux Montréal () is a CEGEP (Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel, or College of General and Vocational Education) located at 255 Ontario Street East, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The College of General and Vocational ...

. He served as the director of the Conservatoire national de musique from 1971 to 1975. He died in Miami in 1991 at the age of 75.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Woolley, Edouard 1916 births 1991 deaths Canadian male composers Canadian male conductors (music) Canadian operatic tenors Canadian male radio actors Canadian male television actors Canadian people of Haitian descent Conservatoire national de musique alumni Academic staff of the Conservatoire national de musique Canadian music educators Haitian emigrants to Canada American voice teachers 20th-century Canadian male actors 20th-century Canadian conductors (music) 20th-century Canadian male opera singers 20th-century American male opera singers 20th-century Canadian composers Academic staff of Cégep du Vieux Montréal