By Randi Bjornstad

It’s a vocal party with a decidedly French theme when Eugene Vocal Arts and the Eugene Concert Orchestra perform just that — La Fête Française — on the stage of the Soreng Theater at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, Nov. 12.

It starts with a piece called Renouveau, which translates to “renewal” in English, by the young composer Marie-Juliette “Lili” Boulanger, the younger sister of Nadia Boulanger, herself a pianist, organist, conductor, and teacher of many of the leading composers of the 20th century.

Marie-Juliette “Lili” Boulanger

Lili Boulanger was born into the seventh generation of a family with prodigious musical talent. Her mother, Raissa Myshetskaya, was a Russian princess who, while studying at the Paris Conservatoire, fell in love with and married one of her teachers, Ernest Boulanger, who was a composer and conductor and the son of a famed cellist, Fréderic Boulanger, and a singer, Juliette Boulanger.

Lili Boulanger’s talent was recognized when she was a toddler, when a family friend, the composer Gabriel Fauré, noticed that the child had perfect pitch, and her parents eagerly supported her entree into musical education. Besides becoming a composer and singer, Boulanger also played piano, cello, violin, and harp. She was the first woman to win the Prix de Rome, in 1913, which included an all-expenses paid sojourn in Rome for a period of three to five years.

However, her health had been compromised from early life, when she contracted bronchial pneumonia age age 2, leaving her with a severely compromised immune system. In fact, she had pursued the Prix de Rome a year earlier, in 1912, but had to leave the competition that year for health reasons.

According to the rules of the Prix de Rome competition, competing compositions had to be written in four weeks. Boulanger, then 19, created a 30-minute cantata for full orchestra, Faust et Hélène, the story of Faust, who sold his soul to the demon Mephistopheles, to win the prize. However, since she was a woman, the judges also awarded an equal prize to a male composer. Boulanger’s father had won the prize himself in 1835, when he was 20 years old.

She continued her musical career, but just five years later, at age 24, she died of intestinal tuberculosis.

The Eugene Vocal Arts program then continues with Calm Nights, Flowers and Trees by Camille Saint-Saëns, plus Claude Debussy’s Trois Chansons de Charles d’Orleans, Doll Aria from Tales of Hoffman, and Georges Bizet’s Toreador Song from Carmen. Then comes Mar Antoine Charpentier’s Prelude, offered as an introduction to the St. Cecilia Mass by Charles Gounod.

The soloists taking all this on are soprano Brooklyn Snow, tenor Matthew Greenblatt, and baritone Zachary Lenox. Diane Retallack, artistic director and conductor of Eugene Vocal Arts and Eugene Concert Orchestra, is at the podium.

La Fête Française (The French Party)

When: 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 12, 2023

Where: Soreng Theater, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (7th and Willamette streets), downtown Eugene

Tickets: $21/$27/$32/$38; students/youth $10, available at the Hult Center box office, 541-682-5000, or online at eugeneconcertchoir.org or hultcenter.org