thumb|Portrait of Paul Vidal, 1924
Paul Antonin Vidal (16 June 1863 – 9 April 1931) was a French composer, conductor and music teacher mainly active in Paris.
Life and career
Paul Vidal was born in Toulouse, and studied at the conservatoires there and in Paris, under Jules Massenet at the latter. He won the Prix de Rome in 1883, one year before Claude Debussy. On 8 January 1886, in Rome, Vidal and Debussy performed Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony at two pianos for Liszt himself, an after-dinner performance that Liszt apparently slept through. The following day they played Emmanuel Chabrier's Trois valses romantiques for Liszt.
Vidal conducted at the Opéra National de Paris where he made his first appearance directing Gwendoline in 1894 (he had coached the singers for the Paris premiere in 1893), and later conducted the first performance of Ariane and the Paris premieres of Roma by Massenet, and L'étranger by d’Indy. He co-founded the Concerts de l’Opera with Georges Marty.
He taught at the Conservatoire de Paris, where his students included composers Lili Boulanger, Marc Delmas, Jacques Ibert and Vladimir Fédorov. He died in Paris, aged 67.
His brother Joseph Bernard Vidal (1859-1924) was also a composer.