Gounod, Charles-François (17 June 1818, Paris; 17 October 1893, Saint-Cloud). composer, studied at the lycée Saint-Louis, where he excelled in Latin, and he entered the Conservatoire in 1836 to study under Henry Berton , Jean Lesueur , and Jacques Halévy despite his widowed mother’s misgivings about his choice of a career in music (see eighteenth-century volume for Berton and Lesueur). After two unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome contest in 1837-38, Gounod carried off first prize…