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Michael William Balfe (15 May 1808 – 20 October 1870) was an Irish composer, best remembered for his operas, especially The Bohemian Girl. After a short career as a violinist, Balfe pursued an operatic singing career, while he began to compose.
Michael Balfe enjoyed a very happy marriage with a talented Austrian soprano, Lina Vogel. They had five children, two girls, both of whom married wealthy, titled men, and two boys, one who sadly died in infancy. The other son, Michael, was a complete waster, leeching on his parents without mercy.
Michael W. Balfe died at his home Rowney Abbey in Ware, England in October 1870 from bronchial asthma (a condition from which he suffered most of his life) complicated by pneumonia. He had been ill for almost a year before his demise.
Michael William Balfe was a singer and composer, best known for the facile melody and simple ballad style of his opera The Bohemian Girl. Balfe appeared as a violinist at age nine and began composing at about the same time.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Balfe was a multi-talented musician, a child prodigy on the violin and an accomplished bass vocalist who sang with many of the greatest singers of his generation, both on the Continent and in Britain.
Michael William Balfe (1808-1870), a popular and influential British composer, helped lay the foundation for British opera of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Active during a period when ballad operas and foreign works dominated the stage in Britain, Balfe composed operas in English for British audiences.
Balfe's Life and Work. Michael William Balfe was born in Dublin on May 15, 1808. The family moved to Wexford for a while but, when Balfe was aged ten, they returned to Dublin. It is likely that he was taught to play the piano and violin by his father who was a musician and dancing master.
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