Sebastián Iradier
Spanish composer from Basque Country
Sebastián Iradier Salaverri (Salaberri) (20 January 1809 – 6 December 1865), or Sebastián Yradier, was a Spanish Basque composer.
Biography
Iradier was born in Lanciego, in the province of Álava. His publisher in Paris urged him to "universalize" his name, from Iradier to Yradier. His only daughter was Matilde.
He is known primarily for his habaneras, especially the one titled "La Paloma", written around 1860 after a visit to Cuba. "La Paloma" was extremely popular in both Spain and the Americas (especially Mexico), where it was responsible for the great popularity achieved by the habanera. Radio Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) has estimated that there are more than one thousand versions of "La Paloma", and said that, together with "Yesterday" by The Beatles, it is one of the most recorded songs in the history of music.
Another of Iradier's compositions is "El Arreglito", a habanera used by Georges Bizet in his opera Carmen. Bizet, thinking it was a folk song, was inspired by the melody, and recomposed it as the aria "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle", also known as the "Habanera". When he discovered his mistake, Bizet added a note to the vocal score of the opera, acknowledging its source.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sebastián Iradier” as spanish composer from Basque Country. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as spanish composer from Basque Country. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q954019. VIAF identifies the subject as 32849369. The Library of Congress control number is no91009648. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1809, 1865 and 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sebastián Iradier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.