Jane Evrard


Jeanne Chevallier, spouse Jeanne Poulet, having taken from 1930 on the pseudonym Jane Evrard,, was a French musician. In 1930, she became the first woman conductor in France.

Life

Born in Neuilly-Plaisance, she started playing the violin at the age of seven. She was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris, in the violin class conducted by M. Lefort. She married the violinist Gaston Poulet in 1912. The couple then met the conductor Georges Rabani, who led the Red Concerts and conducted the orchestras of the and the Théâtre de l’Odéon. In 1913, they were commissioned by Pierre Monteux to take care of the Sacre du Printemps by Nijinsky. During the 1920s, when Gaston Poulet founded the Concerts Poulet, his wife was a violin teacher; they eventually split up.
In 1930, Jeanne Poulet founded her own orchestra, the, composed of twenty-five female musicians. She then called herself "Jane Evrard" and was the first French woman to become a conductor. In the daily Excelsior, Émile Vuillermoz wrote Her concert toured in France, Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands.
At the end of her life, after being evicted from her apartment, she lived in a retirement home of the Rossini Foundation.
She died in Paris at age 91.