Jules Massenet

Massenet entered the Paris Conservatoire as a boy and studied under Ambroise Thomas, winning the Prix de Rome in 1863. Over the next forty-five years he wrote more than forty stage works - opéra-comique, mythic spectacles, lyric dramas, ballets - pumping out hits with a sharp sense of what the Parisian public wanted. Between 1878 and 1896 he taught composition at the Conservatoire; Charpentier, Chausson, Hahn, and Pierné passed through his studio. By the time he died in 1912 the taste had moved and he looked old-fashioned, but Manon and Werther never left the stage. Mid-century reassessment pulled the rest of the catalogue back into view: not genius, but first-class craft from the Belle Époque.