The high road
Massenet came from a relatively privileged background and his conscientiousness in his studies stood him in good stead. He received his first piano lessons from his mother and entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1853. He was awarded the premier prix for piano at the age of seventeen, went on to study in the music theory class, and embarked on a career as a virtuoso concert pianist, while acting as supernumerary timpanist at the Théâtre-Lyrique. In 1863 he was awarded the premier prix for counterpoint and fugue, and the same year, studying composition with Ambroise Thomas, he won the Conservatoire’s top musical honour, the Prix de Rome. On his return from the three statutory years at the Villa Medici, he was commissioned to write his first opéra-comique (La Grand’ Tante), but he did not immediately devote himself exclusively to opera. During the 1870s, he was a founding member of the Société Nationale de Musique (which promoted French music and enabled rising composers to present their works in public), and there he distinguished himself both as a composer and as an accompanying pianist. He also showed an interest in the composition of orchestral works and hybrid forms; in 1873 he composed the oratorio ('drame sacré') Marie-Magdeleine and the incidental music to Leconte de Lisle’s verse drama Les Érinnyes (1873); another oratorio (this time entitled 'mystère'), Ève, followed in 1875. The success of Le Roi de Lahore at the Paris Opéra in 1877 made him the leading composer of opera in France, and the following year he attained the highest of academic honours when, on the death of François Bazin, he was appointed to take his seat at the Académie des Beaux-Arts (one of the academies of the Institut de France). He was only thirty-six years old. France, then in search of new heroes capable of countering Wagner’s influence on European music, naturally turned to Massenet.

A successful teacher
In the year of his election to the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Massenet also joined the Paris Conservatoire as professor of composition, again replacing François Bazin. Ambroise Thomas, who had been his teacher, was by then the director of the Paris Conservatoire and he proved innovative in his running of the institution. Classes in music history (1871) and orchestration (1873) were introduced, and the concerts known as 'exercices publics', giving students exposure to the real world of public performance, once again became important events in the Parisian calendar. To this policy of opening up the establishment to the contemporary artistic world, Massenet contributed his expertise as a successful composer. His pupils witnessed the triumph of Hérodiade (1881), Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). And as a teacher he passed on his success; indeed, most of the winners of the Prix de Rome were students of his: Lucien Hillemacher, Georges Marty, Paul Vidal, Xavier Leroux, Augustin Savard, Gustave Charpentier, Charles Silver, André Bloch, Henri Rabaud, Max d’Ollone, Florent Schmitt, to which prestigious list may be added the names of Alfred Bruneau, Reynaldo Hahn and Raoul Laparra, for whom Massenet’s teaching was extended to include guidance on how to achieve success on the capital’s opera stages. On the death of Ambroise Thomas in 1896, Massenet was offered the directorship, but he decided to turn away from the Conservatoire. 'Free at last and forever rid of [his] chains' (Mes Souvenirs), henceforth he was able to devote himself entirely to composing for the theatre.

Reinventing himself with each new opera
Eclecticism seems to have been the watchword for Jules Massenet’s style, applying to each individual work – in which contrast and diversity are paramount – and to his catalogue as a whole. His subjects span history, from Antiquity to modern times, may be set in France or in exotic lands, and they approach in turn tragedy, naturalistic drama, farce and fantasy. He was not afraid to tackle mythology, as in Ariane or Bacchus, or the great literary texts: Le Cid after Corneille, Werther (Goethe), Don Quichotte (Cervantes), Panurge (Rabelais) or Cendrillon (Perrault). He established a personal style very early on, but did not confine himself to a particular manner; instead, he constantly adapted his music to fit the story it was intended to serve. Strong themes nevertheless emerge from his abundant and varied operatic production: a constantly renewed interest in female characters, for whom he composed his most beautiful pieces, and a marked preoccupation with death, reflected in the particular care he took over the deaths of his protagonists. Between sensuality and melancholy, Massenet followed the paths that lead to the sublime, but without venturing outside the conventions of his time: eager to please audiences, he did not attempt to revolutionise musical expression, even after the bold steps taken by Debussy in the early twentieth century. He steered a steady course, always aiming for natural expression.

Massenet and the salons
Positions in Parisian musical life came at a premium: in order to obtain a position of prestige or gain access to the opera stage, it was generally essential to have the support of influential personalities, members of high society, people in positions of power. Under the Third Republic, such patrons still played an important part in defining aesthetic trends and choosing which composers were to be favoured. However, Jules Massenet’s faultless academic record, his early successes and the support he received from Ambroise Thomas meant that he did not need to seek the favour of the Parisian salons in order to obtain recognition. He began to approach that milieu only after his retirement following the death of Ambroise Thomas. His contribution to the intimate repertoire of those music venues was twofold: mélodies and character pieces for piano. As early as the 1860s he had explored these genres with short Improvisations or Berceuses for keyboard and, inspired by the Germanic model, thematic song cycles, including amongst others Poèmes d’avril, Poème du souvenir and Poème pastoral. But the turn of the century saw an intensification of his contribution those fields with, on the one hand, a Toccata and a Valse folle, both of which enjoyed great popularity, and on the other hand, a new look at prosody with his Expressions lyriques: avec déclamation rythmée.