Jules Massenet

Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets.

Although critics do not rank him among the handful of outstanding operatic geniuses such as Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, his operas are now widely accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque.

According to his colourful but unreliable memoirs,[9] Massenet auditioned in October 1851, when he was nine, before a judging panel comprising Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy, Ambroise Thomas and Michele Carafa, and was admitted at once.

Again, Massenet's own memoirs and the researches of his biographers are at variance: the composer recalled his exile in Chambéry as lasting for two years; Henry Finck and Irvine record that the young man returned to Paris and the Conservatoire in October 1855.

[17] Traditionally, many students at the Conservatoire went on to substantial careers as church organists; with that in mind Massenet enrolled for organ classes, but they were not a success and he quickly abandoned the instrument.

[31] In general he worked fluently, seldom revising, although Le roi de Lahore, his nearest approach to a traditional grand opera, took him several years to complete to his own satisfaction.

[n 10] Édouard-Fortuné Calabresi, joint director of the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels, immediately offered to present the work, and its première, lavishly staged, was given in December 1881.

[9] In the same year he had a modest success in Paris with the one-act Le portrait de Manon at the Opéra-Comique, and a much greater one in London with La Navarraise at Covent Garden.

Massenet wrote in 1910 that he had remained in his post as professor out of loyalty to Thomas, and was eager to abandon all academic work in favour of composing, a statement repeated by his biographers Hugh Macdonald and Demar Irvine.

[55] He was succeeded as professor by Gabriel Fauré, who was doubtful of Massenet's credentials, considering his popular style to be "based on a generally cynical view of art".

[56] With Grisélidis and Cendrillon complete, though still awaiting performance, Massenet began work on Sapho, based on a novel by Daudet about the love of an innocent young man from the country for a worldly-wise Parisienne.

[59] Macdonald comments that at the start of the 20th century Massenet was in the enviable position of having his works included in every season of the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique, and in opera houses around the world.

Hostile critics have seized on this characteristic,[27] but the article on Massenet in the 2001 edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians observes that in the best of his operas this sensual side "is balanced by strong dramatic tension (as in Werther), theatrical action (as in Thérèse), scenic diversion (as in Esclarmonde), or humour (as in Le portrait de Manon).

Macdonald lists a great number of locales depicted in the operas, from ancient Egypt, mythical Greece and biblical Galilee to Renaissance Spain, India and Revolutionary Paris.

Massenet's practical experience in orchestra pits as a young man and his careful training at the Conservatoire equipped him to make such effects without much recourse to unusual instruments.

[17] The "OperaGlass" website of Stanford University shows revised versions as premieres, and The New Grove Dictionary of Opera does not: their totals are forty-four and thirty-six respectively.

[9][73] Having honed his personal style as a young man, and sticking broadly with it for the rest of his career, Massenet does not, as some other composers do, lend himself to classification into clearly defined early, middle and late periods.

[77]The 21st-century critic Anne Feeney comments, "Massenet rarely repeated musical phrases, let alone used recurrent themes, so the resemblance [to Wagner] lies solely in the declamatory lyricism and enthusiastic use of the brass and percussion.

[n 15] The religious element was a regular theme in his secular as well as sacred works: this derived not from any strong personal faith, but from his response to the dramatic aspects of Roman Catholic ritual.

[17] Arthur Hervey, a contemporary critic not unsympathetic to Massenet, commented that Marie-Magdeleine and the later oratorio Ève (1875) were "the Bible doctored up in a manner suitable to the taste of impressionable Parisian ladies – utterly inadequate for the theme, at the same time very charming and effective.

Macdonald remarks that Massenet's orchestral style resembled that of Delibes, "with its graceful movement and bewitching colour", which was highly suited to classical French ballet.

[17] At the time of the British premiere of Manon in 1885, the critic in The Manchester Guardian, reviewing the work enthusiastically, nevertheless echoed his French confrère's view that the composer was really a symphonist, whose music was at its best when purely orchestral.

[91] The only known recording made by Massenet is an excerpt from Sapho, "Pendant un an je fus ta femme", in which he plays a piano accompaniment for the soprano Georgette Leblanc.

Some of the performers were the original creators of the roles, such as Ernest van Dyck (Werther),[93] Emma Calvé (Sapho),[94] Hector Dufranne (Grisélidis),[95] and Vanni Marcoux (Panurge).

Leading men in recordings of Massenet operas include Roberto Alagna, Gabriel Bacquier, Plácido Domingo, Thomas Hampson, Jonas Kaufmann, José van Dam, Alain Vanzo, Tito Schipa and Rolando Villazón.

In the second edition (1907) of Grove, J A Fuller Maitland accused the composer of pandering to the fashionable Parisian taste of the moment, and disguising a uniformly "weak and sugary" style with superficial effects.

[100][n 16] Similar views were expressed in an obituary in The Musical Times: His early scores are, for the greater part, his best ... Later, and for the plain reason that he never attempted to renovate his style, he sank into sheer mannerism.

In the 1930s Sir Thomas Beecham told the critic Neville Cardus, "I would give the whole of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for Massenet's Manon, and would think I had vastly profited by the exchange.

In 2003 Piotr Kaminsky wrote in Mille et un opéras of Massenet's skill in translating French text into flexible melodic phrases, his exceptional orchestral virtuosity, combining sparkle and clarity, and his unerring theatrical instinct.

[17][105] Rodney Milnes, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (1992), agrees that Manon and Werther have a secure place in the international repertoire; he counts three others as "re-establishing a toehold" (Cendrillon, Thaïs and Don Quichotte), with many more due for re-evaluation or rediscovery.