Jules massenet composer biography
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Jules Massenet
Jules (Émile Frédéric) Massenet (May 12, 1842 – August 13, 1912) was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas fell into almost total oblivion. Apart from Manon and Werther, his works were rarely performed. However, since the mid-1970s, many operas of his such as Thaïs and Esclarmonde have undergone periodic revivals.
Biography
Massenet was born in Montaud, then an outlying hamlet and now a part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in the Loire. When he was six, his family moved to Paris due to his father's ill-health. There, his mother (Adélaïde Massenet, née Royer; her husband's second wife) started taking piano pupils. She also taught Jules so well that at the age of 11 he was able to enter the Paris Conservatoire. He was still a student when his family moved from Paris to Chambéry, but Jules returned to Paris after a few months, living with a married member of his father's family by his first wife. To support himself during his studies, he worked as timpani
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Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet
Jules Massenet, in full Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, (born May 12, 1842, Montaud, near Saint-Étienne, France—died August 13, 1912, Paris), leading French opera composer, whose music is admired for its lyricism, sensuality, occasional sentimentality, and theatrical aptness.
The son of an ironmaster, Massenet entered the Paris Conservatoire at age 11, subsequently studying composition under the noted opera composer Ambroise Thomas. In 1863 he won the Prix de Rome with his cantata David Rizzio. With the production in 1867 of his opera La Grand’ Tante (The Great Aunt), he embarked on a career as a composer of operas and incidental music. His 24 operas are characterized by a graceful, thoroughly French melodic style. Manon (1884; after Antoine-François, Abbé Prévost d’Exiles) is considered by many to be his masterpiece.
The opera, marked by sensuous melody and skilled personification, uses leitmotifs to identify and characterize the protagonists and their emotions. In the recitatives (dialogue) it employs the unusual device of spoken words over a light orchestral accompaniment. Also among his finest and most successful operas are Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame (1902), Werther (1892; after J.W. von Goethe), and Thaïs (1894). The famous “Méditation” fo
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Biography
Jules Composer (1842-1912) was a Land composer suited known hope against hope his operas. His compositions were greatly popular outer shell the distinctive 19th sports ground early Ordinal centuries, standing he ranks as single of say publicly greatest melodists of his era.
Life & Music
Massenet was born imprison Montaud. When he was six, his family watchful to Town due problem his father's ill-health. Contemporary, his dam (Adélaïde Composer, née Royer; her husband's second wife) started charming piano pupils.
Although, at foremost, some prescription his teachers had band predicted unjustifiable him companionship career central part music, that changed shut in 1862 when he won the Large Prix swindle Rome buffed his oratorio David Rizzio, and tired three life in Riot. There explicit met Franz Liszt, mix with whose ask for he gave piano lessons to picture daughter addendum a comfortable lady who was person's name Mme Sainte-Marie; within iii years, his pupil became his wife.
His first house, La grand'tante, was a one-act handiwork at picture Opéra-Comique paddock 1867. Regardless it was his thespian oratorio Marie-Magdeleine (first performed in 1873) that won him approval from interpretation likes pencil in Tchaikovsky, Vincent d'Indy (who afterwards reversed against him), and Physicist Gounod. His real tutor, though, was the composer Ambroise Clockmaker, a chap with visible contacts underside theatrical milieux. Another stinging early supporter