André Charles Prosper Messager (30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. Messager took up the piano as a small child and later studied composition with, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage works. As a conductor, Messager held prominent positions in Paris and London.
About André Messager in brief
André Charles Prosper Messager (30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. Messager took up the piano as a small child and later studied composition with, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. He became a major figure in the musical life of Paris and later London, both as a conductor and a composer. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage works, among which his ballet Les Deux Pigeons and opéra comique Véronique have had lasting success. He wrote two operatic works in English, and his later output included musical comedies for Sacha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps. As a conductor, Messager held prominent positions in Paris and London, at the head of the Opéra-Comique and the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Although as a composer he is known chiefly for his light works, he presented a wide range of operas, from Mozart to Richard Strauss. In 1879 he travelled to Cologne to see Wagner’s Die Walküre, and later to Munich for the Ring cycle for Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser; they went to Bayreuth in 1888. He died in Paris in 1929 and is buried at the Château de Thâtelet in Paris.
He is survived by his wife, Sophie-Cornélie, née Lhôte de Selancy, and their son, Paul-Philippe-Émile Messager, a prosperous local tax collector, and a wife of the same name. His music became known for its melodic and orchestral invention, musical craftsmanship, and characteristically French elegance and grace. The musicologist Jean-Michel Nectoux comments that after his studies Messager developed into one of the finest orchestrators of the period. He was awarded a bursary to study at the École Niedermeyer in Paris, an academyknown for its focus on church music. His works have been infrequently revived, but historians of music consider him the last major figures in French opéro-comique andOpérette. He won the gold medal of the Societé des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs Musique with a symphony with a cantatas de Donner. He also won further prizes for his cantats Juan et Haydé en Haydée, Donner and Donner, and for his four-hands skittish piano piece Souvenirs de Bayuthre de Souvenir. He went to Munich in 1888 to complete a cycle for the Die Meister and Parsifal; they were performed in Bayuth, Rheingold and Ruth von Nürnberg.
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