Jules Massenet

A composer of the late 19th century, Jules Massenet is best known for his operas, three of which are performed regularly: Werther, Manon and Thaïs, from which the famous "Méditation" is taken. Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet was born on May 12, 1842, the son of an industrialist and forge master specializing in the production of blades for scythes, in Montaud, now part of Saint-Étienne. At the age of six, his family moved to Paris and he began piano lessons with his mother, before entering the Conservatoire national de musique in 1851, where he studied piano with Adolphe Laurent, organ with François Benoist, solfeggio and counterpoint with Augustin Savard and François Bazin, harmony with Henri Reber and composition with Ambroise Thomas, future author of the opera Mignon. He had to interrupt his studies when his parents moved to Chambéry. Remaining in Paris, he had to support himself and gave his first concerts, accompanying singers and playing the triangle or timpani in various orchestras. Awarded first prize for piano in 1859, then for counterpoint in 1863, the young Massenet won the Grand Prix de Rome that same year for his cantata David Rizzio, praised by Berlioz. He stayed at the Villa Medici in Rome, and took advantage of the opportunity to travel through Italy, Germany and Hungary, creating memorabilia with Scènes napolitaines (1864) and Scènes hongroises (1871). Fittingly, he sent off his scores and made the acquaintance of Franz Liszt, who encouraged him and entrusted him with pupils, including Louise-Constance "Ninon" de Gressy, whom he married on his return to Paris in 1866. He set to work on his first opera, La Coupe du roi de Thulé, written for a competition and since lost, then on La Grand' Tante, which met with some success at the Opéra-Comique on April 3, 1867. However, only the piano-chant score survives, the orchestration having been lost in the fire of 1887, along with that of Don César de Bazan (November 30, 1872). In 1870, he took part in the war as an infantryman, then resumed composing after the Commune of 1871, with Scènes pittoresques. The orchestral suite was his favorite genre, as witnessed by the Scènes dramatiques and theOuverture de Phèdre, contemporaries of the incidental music for Les Erinnyes, based on Leconte de Lisle, which received public acclaim in 1873. On April 11 of the same year, the oratorio Marie-Magdeleine, which he had begun writing in Rome, was presented at the Théâtre de l'Odéon, with Pauline Viardot in the title role. Well-received, the work brought him fame, before being reworked for revivals in Nice in February 1903 and at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in April 1906. The same was true of the oratorio Ève (1875), but the opera Le roi de Lahore (April 27, 1877), the fruit of several years' work, was a veritable triumph at the Opéra Garnier. Already decorated with the Légion d'honneur, Massenet was appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire at the age of thirty-six, and a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. His pupils included Alfred Bruneau, Gabriel Pierné, Reynaldo Hahn, Charles Koechlin, Florent Schmitt, Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Guy Ropartz, Georges Enesco, Albéric Magnard and Henri Rabaud. Despite the lukewarm reception given to the oratorio La Vierge in 1880, the opera Hérodiade, rejected in Paris, was applauded in Brussels on December 19, 1881, before finally being accepted at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris three years later. His best-known suite, Scènes alsaciennes, also dates from 1881. Recognized for his melodic talents, Massenet turned his attention to opera, commissioning Henri Meilhac to write the libretto for Manon, based on the novel by Abbé Prévost. Premiered at the Opéra-Comique on January 19, 1884, the operatic masterpiece reached 200 performances within a few years. Unable to collaborate with Émile Zola on La Faute de l'abbé Mouret, he employed three authors for the adaptation of Corneille's Cid (November 30, 1885). Two other minor works followed, the exotic Esclarmonde programmed for the festivities of the 1889 Universal Exhibition and, in March 1891, the ambitious five-act Le Mage, which failed to convince, while the composer lost his regular publisher Georges Hartmann, who went bankrupt. In 1892, he failed to convince the Opéra-Comique to stage Werther, based on Goethe, which premiered in German in Vienna on February 16. Less than a year later, given the success of the French version in Geneva, the Salle Favart programmed it on January 16, 1893. Although the public reception was lukewarm, critics hailed this intimate, perfectly accomplished work, whose chromatic progressions are reminiscent of Wagner's works. Another success soon followed with Thaïs, conceived for the Opéra-Comique but unveiled at the Palais Garnier on March 16, 1894. Adapted by Louis Gallet from the novel by Anatole France, the work, created for the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson, oscillates between voluptuousness and asceticism, giving rise to a famous page borrowed from the second act, the Meditation for violin, which became a piece in its own right abundantly covered by all virtuosos. The enduring success of Manon prompted him to stage Le Portrait de Manon, while La Navarraise, presented in London in June 1894, spotlighted the singer Emma Calvé, who was also chosen for the role of Sapho in Paris in 1897. In 1896, after the death of Ambroise Thomas, he refused to take over the Conservatoire and resigned his teaching post, too busy with the creation of his operas. For several years, Massenet had been working on two works that were supposed to combine all his musical and theatrical qualities: the fairy tale Cendrillon (May 1899) and the medieval legend Grisélidis (November 1901) delighted audiences at the Opéra-Comique, despite their disappointing librettos. Moving from serious to lighter subjects, he presented the Monte-Carlo Opera with the fable Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame (1902), Chérubin (1905), Thérèse (1907), Don Quichotte (1910) with Fédor Chaliapine and Roma (1912), with a predilection for Antiquity if we add Ariane (1906) and Bacchus (1909), presented in Paris with the singer Lucy Arbell. Weakened by cancer, he nevertheless managed to complete Panurge (1913) and Cléopâtre (1914), both premiered posthumously, and even Amadis, twenty years in the making and belatedly premiered in Monte-Carlo on April 1, 1922, almost ten years after the composer's death on August 13, 1912, at the age of 70.

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