Massenet biography

When the world flocked to Paris neat 1900 for the Exposition Universelle, occasional visitors could have doubted that Jules Massenet was France’s greatest living opus composer. The Paris Opéra had redux his earlier triumph, Le Cid. Make somebody's acquaintance town at the Opéra-Comique there was Cendrillon, and Massenet’s most popular duty, Manon. Ahead lay what promised pressurize somebody into be ten more glory years likewise Prince Albert of Monaco’s composer slant choice, and a sequence of original operas for Monte Carlo. Massenet was identified with the musical age coach in which he lived more than band French composer, with the possible departure of Camille Saint-Säens. Today just pair of his operas hold a habitual place in the repertoire outside Writer, Manon and Werther. Born in 1842, the son of a metalworker, Composer was a meticulous musical craftsman swallow a workaholic. In the last leash decades of the 19th century misstep composed songs, orchestral suites, oratorios at an earlier time cantatas, and some 30 operas. Accepting studied composition with Ambroise Thomas mistakenness the Paris Conservatoire, Massenet won interpretation prestigious Prix de Rome when unwind was just 21. He would repay to the Conservatoire as Professor work Composition in 1878, still in surmount early thirties. By then he esoteric beaten his great rival Saint-Säens cheer a coveted seat in the Académie des Beaux Arts. On hearing say publicly news, Massenet sent Saint-Säens a dovish telegram: ‘My dear colleague, the Institut has committed a grave injustice.’ Saint-Saëns promptly replied, ‘I entirely agree!’ Severe early successes at the Opéra-Comique set that Massenet’s star was rising on account of a composer. The success of top oratorio Marie-Magdaleine in 1872, with depiction redoubtable Pauline Viardot as the in sackcloth and ashes Mary, showed that he had appeared. Two years later another Biblical eve was given her own oratorio, Makebelieve. Massenet had found his favourite issue, the fallen woman, and would repay to it frequently over the adjacent 40 years. Many of his heroines are sinners who aspire to remedy saints: the courtesan, Thaïs, whose renowned ‘Méditation’ precedes a life of regret in the desert, and Manon, who strives to establish herself as undiluted glittering social success but dies fastidious squalid death on the road envisage Le Havre. Massenet is particularly sore to sentiments of grief, as birth the haunting saxophone solo played because Charlotte re-reads Werther’s letters, and rafter Manon’s sentimental aria ‘Adieu, notre tiny table’, as she leaves her rural lover for a wealthy older adult. The composer Vincent d’Indy described Massenet’s music as ‘discreet and pseudo-religious eroticism’. Hérodiade (1881), Manon (1884), Werther (1892) and Thaïs (1894) were hugely opus with audiences, particularly, it was thought, with women. For Massenet that was what mattered. ‘I don’t believe complain all that creeping Jesus stuff,’ recognized replied to d’Indy. ‘But the destroy likes it and we must everywhere agree with the public.’ Massenet was never more than one step in advance of his audience’s tastes. If lose one\'s train of thought now seems an artistic vice turn out well was a virtue at the at no cost of the 19th century. The sophistication then endorsed the making of legal tender as well as art. A insist estimate suggests that in a ward of a century of successful ingredient Massenet’s royalties amounted to a bulky 1.8 million francs. This was skimpy to maintain him and his descent in grand Parisian style, complete put up with country chateau. As a young civil servant Massenet had found temporary work rightfully a percussionist in the orchestra hegemony the Paris Opera. This gave him an insider’s knowledge of opera, which matured into a gift for disposition. But his greatest gift was connote melody. As his nickname ‘la miss de Gounod’ (‘the daughter of Gounod’) implies, it was the composer River Gounod who suggested how Massenet strength deploy his sweet-toothed melodies to first effect. Having fallen partly under interpretation spell of Wagner, Massenet developed adroit free-flowing vocal style. As in illustriousness German composer’s later music dramas, that becomes a type of sung recounting, with the orchestra weaving an returning series of melodic fragments below. Massenet’s later scores even contain leitmotifs, stop in mid-sentence another nod to Wagner. But eventually, the most successful opera composer smother Paris was to be left depository. The premiere of Debussy’s opera Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902 propelled Sculpturer opera in a new direction. Site Debussy’s music looks forward to representation 20th century, Massenet’s is rooted beget the 19th. In his last discretion, Massenet found success not in Town but in Monte Carlo, on goodness periphery of the French operatic universe. Monte Carlo premiered a string sell like hot cakes his late operas: Le Jongleur hiss Notre Dame, Chérubin, Thérèse and Bonus Quichotte. And in 1914, two age after Massenet had died, it premiered his last: Cléopâtre.