AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

Personalities | Jules Massenet | Late Romantic | Classical

(Jool Mas-na’) 1842–1912
French composer

Shortly after his first operatic success with Le roi de Lahore (‘The King of Lahore’, 1877) Massenet became professor at the Paris Conservatoire; he was subsequently elected to the French Academy instead of his rival Saint-Saëns. Massenet’s 28 operas include several enduring masterpieces: Manon (1884) remains one of the most popular French Romantic operas, while Werther (1892), after Goethe, arguably his finest work, is intensely dramatic. Thaïs (1894) displays a post-Wagnerian exoticism, described by D’Indy as ‘semi-religious eroticism’, illustrated in the seductive lyricism of its famous ‘Méditation’, often played as a violin encore. The gutsy verismo style of Bizet’s Carmen infuses La Navarraise (1894, aptly set in Spain) and Sapho (1897) with expressive power, while the medievalism of his later operas (Esclarmonde, 1888 and Grisélidis, 1894) – for which he requested pre-Raphaelite sets – foreshadows Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). Don Quichotte (1910), based on Cervantes, is an elegiac romance of appealing simplicity.

Recommended Recording:
Manon, soloists, Capitole Chorus & Orchestra, Toulouse (cond) Michel Plasson (EMI/Erato)

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

AUTHORITATIVE

An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...

CURATED

Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.