Recordings

With Miriam Margolyes (narrator)

Babar began as a bedtime story. In 1930 Cécile de Brunhoff invented it for her sons Laurent and Mathieu, who were so taken with the young elephant's adventures that they asked their father, the illustrator Jean de Brunhoff, to draw it. The book that followed became his life's work, and his son Laurent's after him; Cécile, feeling that her contribution was too small to be credited, asked for her name to be removed. Ten years later Poulenc found himself entertaining the granddaughter of a cousin, noticed that she was bored by what he was playing, put Brunhoff's book on the piano and began to improvise. The ideas he found that afternoon stayed with him until he completed the score in 1945; it was premiered on French radio the following year. Miriam Margolyes narrates.

Scala Radio article (4 December 2020)