Nicolas Isouard

Who was Nicolas Isouard?

Nicolas Isouard was a Maltese composer.

Isouard studied in Rabat or Mdina with Francesco Azopardi, in Palermo with Giuseppe Amendola, and in Naples with Nicola Sala and Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi. From 1795 he was organist at St. John de Gerusalemme in Valletta at the Conventual Church of the Order of Saint John, San Giovanni di Malta.

He moved to Paris, where he worked as a free composer and befriended composer Rodolphe Kreutzer. The pair worked together on several operas, including Le petit page ou La prison d'état and Flaminius à Corinthe. Isouard adopted the pseudonym Nicolò and found rapid success in the field of opéra comique with Michel-Ange and L'intrigue aux fenêtres. He composed regularly for the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique, writing some thirty works for them.

He composed masses, motets, cantatas, romances, and duos, along with over 40 operas.

Isouard had two daughters, Sophie-Nicole, a composer of romances, and Annette-Julie, and pianist and composer. His brother Joseph had a career as a singer and opera director before being named inspector of historic monuments in Rouen. Nicolas Isouard was buried in Notre-Dame-des-Victoires.