Laparra worked as a music critic for the magazines Le Ménestrel and Le Matin and taught at the Conservatoire de Paris. Among his students were Claude Champagne and Cemal Reşit Rey. His compositions are often influenced by Spanish and Basque folk music.
He remains one of the masters of French Hispanism without remaining locked up in this speciality.
He was the brother of the painter William Laparra. He died during the bombing of Boulogne-Billancourt in 1943 and is buried in Chézy-sur-Marne.
Stéphan Etcharry, articles in Carlos Alvar, Gran Enciclopedia Cervantina, 10 volumes (Madrid: University of Alcalá, Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, Castalia editorial S. A., 2005), ISBN8-4974-0177-8.
L'Illustre Fregona (Raoul Laparra)
Suite ancienne en marge de Don Quichotte (Raoul Laparra)
Stéphan Etcharry, Le Prix de Rome de composition de 1903: La cantate Alyssa de Raoul Laparra. Essai de caractérisation du style musical, in Musiker. Cuadernos de Música, no. 16 (Donostia, Saint-Sébastien: Eusko Ikaskuntza [Société d'Études Basques], 2008), ISSN1137-4470.
Stéphan Etcharry, "'La Jota' (1911) à l'Opéra-Comique: LEspagne noire' de Raoul Laparra", in: Alexandre Dratwicki and Agnès Terrier (eds), Exotisme et art lyrique (Paris/Venice: Opéra-Comique/Palazzetto Bru Zane, Centre de musique romantique française, June 2012), published online on 26 September 2016, p. 1-27, [bruzanemediabase.com : http://www.bruzanemediabase.com/Parutions-scientifiques-en-ligne/Articles/Etcharry-Stephan-La-Jota-1911-a-l-Opera-Comique.-L-Espagne-noire-de-Raoul-Laparra/(offset)/2].
Samuel Llano, Whose Spain? Negotiating Spanish music in Paris, 1908–1929 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).