Massenet, Jules

(1842-1912)

French composer, who wrote oratorios, cantatas, instrumental pieces, and orchestral suites.

 He was born in Montaud and educated at the Paris Conservatoire, where from 1878 to 1894 he was professor of composition. His popularity rests mainly on his operas, however, with their graceful, sensuous melodies and sentimental plots. Manon (1884), based on the novel Manon Lescaut by the French novelist Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, is his most important work and is still frequently performed.

Some of his other operas are Hérodiade (1881), Le Cid (1885), Werther (1892), Thaïs (1894) from which the well-known “Meditation” comes, and Don Quichotte (1910).

His famous “Elégie” is an air from the incidental music composed in 1873 for a play, Les Erinyes, by the French poet Charles Marie Leconte de Lisle. His memoirs, My Recollections, appeared in 1912 (trans. 1919).