Camille Saint-Saëns Biography

Camille Saint-Saens was the French composer and organist who wrote the famous opera ‘Samson et Dalila’. A major musical figure of the Romantic era, he was also a very successful pianist and a knowledgeable scholar of music history. He was a child prodigy in music who gave his first concert at the tender age of ten. Furthering his passion for music he studied organ and composition at the Paris Conservatory and went on to pursue a career as an organist at the famed Church of the Madeleine in Paris. A meeting with the celebrated Hungarian composer and teacher Franz Liszt led to an enduring friendship over the course of which Liszt guided and influenced the budding career of the younger Saint-Saens. Over the years he made a name for himself as a brilliant pianist and composer and established himself in a thriving freelance career. He was much sought-after not only in his native France, but also in other European countries, Britain and the Americas. He also held a teaching position once, and even though he taught for less than a period of five years, he left a deep impact on the development of French music. In spite of his illustrious professional career, his personal life was not a happy one, consistently marred by familial problems.