“Emmanuel Chabrier wanted to write operas so lewd, people would start to ‘make babies in the stalls’.” Where other composers wrote music full of the joy of God, or the joy of great knowledge, Chabrier wrote about the pure, unadulterated fun of being human. “His party piece was to sing the front page of that day’s newspaper, dramatising the events depicted – a street accident, the fall of the Bourse – with appropriate extra-musical effects.” But beyond all the bluster and hedonist revelry was a serious artist whose works attracted the admiration of composers as distinguished as Debussy and Ravel.