Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era. He is best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon and Werther. He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music.
About Jules Massenet in brief
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era. He is best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon and Werther. He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. He was the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time of his death he was regarded by many critics as old-fashioned and unadventurous. After a few decades of neglect, his works began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, and many of them have since been staged and recorded. His operas are now widely accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque. He died in Chambéry, south of France, in 1912 at the age of 75. He left behind a wife and four children, all of whom went on to become successful composers of their own. His music is now considered one of the most important of the 20th century and one of only a handful of operatic greats of all time. His works have been recorded by several orchestras, including the Opéra-Comique, the Orchestre National de Paris, and the Orchestral National de France. He wrote his first opera, Manon, in 1867, and his last, Werther, in 1911.
His last opera, The Marriage of Figaro, was published in 1913. He had a long career, from 1867 to 1912, and was a professor at the Paris Conservatoire. He taught composition there from 1878 until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise Thomas. His students included Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné. He won the country’s top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, and composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known in France and abroad. His best-known work is Manon (1867), which was staged more than 100 times between 1867 and 1883. He later wrote Werther (1882) and The Marriage Of Figaro (1883), both of which were staged in Paris. His son, Léon, was also a composer, and wrote a number of operas in the same period. His wife, Eléonore-Adelaïde née Royer de Marancour, was a talented amateur musician who gave Jules his first piano lessons. He studied at the Lycée Saint-Louis and, from either 1851 or 1853, the Paris conservatoire, where he was admitted at once. In 1855 he returned to Montmartre and resumed his studies. By 1859 he had progressed so far as to win the Conservator’s prize for the top prize for pianists.
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