Métra, Jules Olivier 06/02/1830 - 10/22/1889

Wikipedia:
Jules Louis Olivier Métra (* 2 June 1830 in Reims; † 22 October 1889 in Paris) was a French composer and conductor.
The son of the actor Jean Baptiste Métra, he appeared on stage with his father as a child. In 1842 he made his debut at the Théâtre Comte in Paris. He also learned to play the violin autodidactically and, at the age of nineteen, conducted the orchestra at a ball on Boulevard Rochechouart. On the advice of an orchestral musician, he also attended courses by Antoine Elwart at the Paris Conservatoire, where he received a first prize in harmony.
From 1855 he led the orchestra of the Bal Mabille. During this time he wrote many of his waltzes, which helped him to great popularity, such as Le Tour du Monde, Valse des Roses, Gambrinus, La Nuit and La Sérénade. From 1872 to 1877 he was orchestra leader at the Folies Bergère, for which he composed several ballets, including Les Volontaires. He also conducted the opera balls at La Monnaie in Brussels from 1874-76.
In 1877 Henri Halenzier-Dufreynoy, the director of the Paris Opera, engaged him to conduct the Opera Ball together with Johann Strauss. In 1878, Halenzier commissioned him to compose the Japanese ballet Yedda, which was performed to great acclaim in January 1879.
In 1885 he founded the Soirées Métra at the Palais Vivienne, which consisted of promenade concerts, balls and the mid-week and Saturday night festivals. In 1888, his operetta Le Mariage avant la Lettre, to a libretto by Alphonse Jaime and Georges Duval, appeared at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.
In addition to waltzes and operettas, Métra composed numerous arrangements of operettas by other composers such as Jacques Offenbach, Emile Tédesco, Louis Ganne, Robert Planquette, Charles Lecocq, Edmond Audran and Léon Vasseur. Métra's compositions were used as film scores in Ciboulette (by Claude Autant-Lara, 1930) and Les Destinées Sentimentales (by Olivier Assayas, 2000), among others.