Essential Massenet
Jules Massenet (1842–1912) was a major figure on the Parisian opera scene in the 1880s and ‘90s, at a time when French composers began to incorporate the all-pervasive influence of Richard Wagner. Massenet was no firebrand, but allied elements of Wagner’s style – primarily his more seamless way of intertwining voice and orchestra in a rich musical canvass – to his own gift for orchestration and memorable melody. His operas' success was boosted by subjects that, not unlike several of Wagner's, mixed the religious with the sensual or, in the case of 'Werther', cashed in on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's sensational novel of a century earlier, 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'.
Read more…Massenet's musical training, however, initially concentrated on the piano, which he studied at the Paris Conservatoire from the age of 11. He moved on to study composition and won the coveted Prix de Rome in 1863. His works composed in the early 1870s included sacred dramas focusing on female characters – as many of his operas would. A mixture of wonderful melodies and surging orchestral and vocal lines would characterise later works such as 'Manon' (a treatment of the same subject that Puccini would use for his 'Manon Lescaut'), 'Werther' and 'Thaïs' (famous for its 'méditation'), about an Alexandrian courtesan who finds religion. Extracts of all three are among the works included here. Towards the end of the century, though, Massenet’s form of perfumed sensuality would be overtaken by the more modernist sound worlds of, in particular, Claude Debussy. This state of affairs found resonance in his decision to compose 'Don Quichotte' (1910), based on Cervantes's classic novel, whose title character is an anti-heroic knight coming to terms with an uncomprehending world.