Louise Juliette Talma (October 31, 1906August 13, 1996) was an American composer, academic, and pianist. After studies in New York and in France, piano with Isidor Philipp and composition with Nadia Boulanger, she focused on composition from 1935. She taught at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, and at Hunter College. Her opera The Alcestiad was the first full-scale opera by an American woman staged in Europe. She was the first women in the National Institute of Arts and Letters and being awarded the Sibelius Medal for Composition. Career Born in Arcachon in France to an American mother, Alma Cecile Garrigues, a professional soprano who took the name Cecile Talma around 1900, and a father whose identity remains unknown. Mother and daughter returned to the United States in 1914, settling in New York City. Talma grew up surrounded by music but was also an excellent science student and considered becoming a chemist before deciding on a career as a musician. After graduating from Wadleigh High School, Talma entered the Institute of Musical Arts (now Juilliard) in New York in 1922, where she studied both piano and composition. She later earned a Bachelor of Music degree from New York University in 1931 and a master's degree from Columbia in 1933. She studied chemistry at Columbia University, and simultaneously piano and composition at the Institute of Musical Arts (which became the Juilliard School) from 1922 to 1930. She received her bachelor of music degree from New York University and masters of arts degree from Columbia University. She studied piano with Isidor Philipp at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, every summer from 1926 to 1935. From 1928, she studied annually composition with Nadia Boulanger, deciding in 1935 to focus on composition. She continued the studies with Boulanger until 1939. Talma taught at Hunter College of the City University of New York from the late 1920s. In 1926, after making a successful debut as a concert pianist in New York, Talma spent her first summer at the American Conservatory in Fontainebleau, France, where she met pedagogue Nadia Boulanger. Under Boulanger's guidance, Talma gave up her piano studies in order to focus on composition, converted from agnosticism to Roman Catholicism in 1934 with Boulanger as her godmother, and adopted a lifestyle similar to Boulanger's in its devotion to music. While many of her early works express desire for an unattainable beloved (likely Boulanger), she also