Yvonne Desportes

Who is Yvonne Desportes?

Yvonne Desportes was a French writer and composer and daughter of Émile Desportes.

She was born in Coburg, Germany, and studied with Noel and Jean Galton, Maurice Emmanuel, Paul Dukas and Marcel Dupre at the Paris Conservatory. She won the Prix de Rome in 1932 and lived in Rome from 1933-37 at the Villa de Medicis. While there she met another Prix de Rome winner, the French sculptor Ulysse Gémignani and they married.

In 1943 she returned to Paris where she took a position teaching at the Paris Conservatory. Besides teaching and working as a composer, Desportes also wrote a number of textbooks. She died in Paris in 1993.