The composer

Having turned 40 when World

War II broke out, Francis Poulenc briefly served in an anti-aircraft unit in 1940. After demobilisation, however, he spent most of his war years in Nazi-occupied Paris where he gave recitals, occasionally retiring to his estate in Noizay where he composed. A number of his wartime compositions, including the ballet Les Animaux modèles, contain subversive anti-german melodies, and he set texts by poets who were part of the Resistance including Aragon and Éluard. He himself was a member of the Front National des Musiciens resistance movement.