Jules Massenet

The composer, who was born in Montaud near Saint-Étienne in 1842 and died in Paris in 1912, became one of the most important representatives in the field of opera in the 19th century after studying with Ambroise Thomas at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1878, Massenet was appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, a position he held for 18 years. His students included Gustave Charpentier, Reynaldo Hahn and Ernest Chausson.
In 1884, Manon was staged at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Werther, conceived in the early 1880s, was rejected by Léon Carvalho, the director of the Opéra-Comique, and premiered in Vienna only in 1892. Thaïs was premiered at the Palais Garnier in 1894; the Méditation for violin and orchestra, which is played between the two scenes of the second act when the curtain is closed, became a popular concert piece and was also used in ballet, for example by Hans van Manen in Black Cake and Roland Petit in Ma Pavlova.
The operas Cendrillon (1899), performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1899, and Don Quichotte (1910), written for Schaljapin and premiered in Monte-Carlo in 1910, are still in the repertoire today. However, works such as Esclarmonde (1889) and Grisélidis (1901) have fallen into oblivion.