• Country: France
• Genres: Opera, Orchestral, Vocal, Concerto

Biography

Today Jules Massenet is best known for the operas Manon and Werther and the solo violin Méditation, from Thaïs. During his lifetime, however, Massenet was one of the most prolific and celebrated operatic composers on earth. The public anxiously awaited his output, and Massenet became both wealthy and famous practicing his craft. His legacy endures because of his ability to create music which portrays the intimacy of human relationships and the emotions and conflicts that arise from them. His gift for melody is reflected in a variety of arias that are among the most beautiful in the French operatic repertoire. He was also a brilliant orchestrator, a skill which allowed him to capture the moods and colors of a wide variety of places and eras. In addition to opera, Massenet composed songs, oratorios, ballets and orchestral works, as well as chamber music and works for solo piano.

Massenet was born in Montaud, France, to the family of a struggling metal worker. At the tender age of 10, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatory, where he studied with famed operatic composer Ambroise Thomas. In 1863, Massenet won the Prix de Rome, a prize which allowed him to travel and study in Italy. There the young man experienced the sounds and textures of the region and began to compose in earnest. While in Italy, Massenet met Liszt, who introduced him to his future wife, Mademoiselle Sainte-Marie.

Massenet's first opera, a one-act entitled La Grand' Tante (The Great Aunt), was produced (with only moderate success) at the Opéra-Comique in 1867. In 1877 Massenet's exotic opera Le Roi de Lahore (The King of Lahore) had a highly successful premiere at the Paris Opera, marking the beginning of his ascendancy as France's most prolific and celebrated operatic composer.

In 1878, his former teacher, Thomas, invited him to become a professor at the Paris Conservatory. Massenet achieved considerable success as a teacher, influencing an entire generation of French composers, including Gustav Charpentier and the song composer Reynaldo Hahn.

A highly prolific composer, Massenet worked continuously throughout his life, completing a great deal of music in addition to his 25 published operas. His approximately 250 songs often reflect the same melodic ingenuity and expressiveness that define his operatic works. Massenet composed several song cycles, including Poéme d'Avril (April Poem), which is often identified as the first French song cycle. Among the most famous of his solo songs are "Ouvre tes yeux bleus" (Open your blue eyes) and "Si tu veux, Mignonne" (If you wish it, sweetheart). The composer's First Orchestral Suite (originally entitled Symphony in F) premiered in 1867. This was the first of seven suites by Massenet, with programmatic subjects ranging from Alsace (Scènes alsaciennes, 1882) to Hungary (Scènes hongroises, 1871), and from Shakespeare (Scénes dramatiques, 1875) to Fairyland (Scènes de féerie, 1881). The most famous of his orchestral suites, Scénes pittoresques (Picturesque Scenes), was first performed in Paris during March of 1874. Massenet also composed several ballets, including La Cigale, Espada, and Les Rosati. In addition to Marie-Magdeleine, his oratorios include Ève (1875) and La Terre promise (The promised land, 1900). He wrote a considerable amount of incidental music for plays, including Sardou's Le Crocodile (1886) and Racine's Phèdre (1900). His only piano concerto was first performed in 1903 and receives occasional modern performances. ~ Robert Barefield, All Music Guide

(b Montand, St Etienne, 12 May 1842; d Paris, 13 Aug 1912). French composer. His family moved to Paris in 1847 and he entered the Conservatoire at the age of 11 as a piano pupil of Adolphe Laurent. He later studied harmony with Reber and composition with Ambroise Thomas, winning the Prix de Rome in 1863. In Rome he got to know Liszt and, through him, Constance de Sainte Marie, who became his pupil and, in 1866 after his return to Paris, his wife. The following year his opera La grand′tante was given at the Opéra-Comique, and in1873 Marie-Magdeleine at the Théâtre de l′Odéon initiated a series of drames sacrés based on the lives of female biblical characters. Many of his secular operas, too, are in effect portraits of women.

In 1878 Massenet was made a teacher of composition at the Conservatoire, where he remained all his life, influencing many younger French composers, including Charpentier, Koechlin, Pierné and Hahn. In his own music he began to move away from the suave, sentimental melodic style derived from Gounod and to adopt a more Wagnerian type of lyrical declamation. The change is apparent in Manon (1884), which placed Massenet in the forefront of French opera composers, and still more in Werther (1892).

But as early as 1877, in Hérodiade, Massenet had begun to modify the symmetry and loosen the syntax of his melodies to give them a more speaking, intimate, conversational character. Repetitions are usually masked or transferred to the orchestra while the voice takes a lyrical recitative line in the Wagnerian manner; literal repetitions are carefully calculated to provide an insistent, emotional quality. Often his melodies have a swaying, hesitant character (9/8 or 6/8) - first and most effectively used in Act 1 of Manon to express a girl's hesitant yet delighted awareness of her own charms. By Werther, the relationship of voice and orchestra is more sophisticated, and that opera contains clear examples of Massenet's dissolution of formal melody into rhapsodic recitative-like writing as evolved by Wagner. Massenet's music is harmonically conservative, rarely venturing beyond modest chromaticisms; rhythmically, it is original in the variations he uses to give the melody a more caressing, intimate character. He had a characteristically French ear for orchestral nuance. Though primarily a lyrical composer, he was also a master of scenes of action, as for example at the opening of Manon.

After Sapho (1897) Massenet scored few major successes. His conception of opera became outdated long before his death and his position as France's leading opera composer was finally challenged when Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande was given at the Opéra-Comique in 1902. The unpretentiousness of his best works recommends their melodic charm and gracefulness, and they remain firmly in the standard opera-house repertory.

works:
Dramatic music

• Le roi de Lahore (1877)
• Hérodiade (1881)
• Manon (1884)
• Le Cid (1885)
• Esclarmonde (1889)
• Werther (1892)
• Thaïs (1894)
• Sapho (1897)
• Cendrillon (1899)
• Le jongleur de Notre-Dame (1902)
• Thérèse (1907)
• Don Quichotte (1910)
• c20 others
• incidental music for 13 plays, incl. Notre-Dame de Paris (1879)
• Phèdre (1900)
• 3 ballets

Choral music

• Requiem (c1863)
• motets, cantatas, partsongs

Vocal music

• over 200 songs, incl. cycles

Instrumental music

• Scènes alsaciennes, suite (1881)
• other suites
• 3 ovs.
• Pf Conc. (1903)
• chamber music
• pf music

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For more information on Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, visit Britannica.com.

Massenet, Jules (1842-1912) was in his time an extraordinarily successful and prolific French opera composer. His musical style has a melodic charm and grace, aptly described by d'Indy as a discreet and quasi-religious eroticism. His most famous operas are Werther (1892, based on Goethe's novel), Manon (1894, based on Prévost's novel), and Thaïs (1894, based on a novel by Anatole France). He also collaborated with Catulle Mendès on two operas and based compositions on works by Hugo, Alphonse Daudet, Flaubert, and many other contemporary authors. Professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire from 1878 until his death, Massenet had an impact on a generation of French composers, some of whom reacted violently against what they saw as the facile charm of his music.

[Kerry Murphy]

(zhül mäsənā') , 1842–1912, French composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where he taught from 1878 to 1896. In addition to many songs, several oratorios, and a number of orchestral suites, he composed more than 20 operas. His most famous work is Manon (1884), which exemplifies his sensuous style and contains accompanied spoken dialogue instead of traditional recitative. His other operas are Werther (1892), Thaïs (1894), and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame (1902).

Bibliography

See his memoirs (tr. 1919, repr. 1970); study by J. Harding (1970).

French composer whose works include more than 20 operas, including Manon (1884) and Thaïs (1894).

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