Paul Abraham Dukas was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical, having abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His best-known work is the orchestral piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the fame of which has eclipsed that of his other surviving works. Among these are the opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, his Symphony in C and Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, the Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau, and a ballet, La Péri.
Paul Dukas
Gazette des Beaux-Arts, for which Dukas wrote music criticism
Costume design for Dukas's La Péri by Léon Bakst, 1922.
Paul Dukas and students of his composition class at the Paris Conservatoire, 1929. Olivier Messiaen is on the extreme right; Maurice Duruflé stands next to him
Ariane et Barbe-bleue is an opera in three acts by Paul Dukas. The French libretto is adapted from the symbolist play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck, itself loosely based on the French literary tale La Barbe bleue by Charles Perrault.
The composer
Georgette Leblanc, who created the role of Ariane