Jules Massenet

Jules Massenet was the leading opera composer of late nineteenth-century France. Born near Saint-Étienne in 1842, he entered the Paris Conservatoire as a boy, paid his way for a time playing timpani in theater orchestras, and won the Prix de Rome, France's top prize for young composers. He later taught composition at the Conservatoire for years, shaping a generation of French musicians.

His gift was melody, and he spent it mostly on stories of love and its costs. Manon follows a young woman torn between passion and luxury; Werther, after Goethe, traces a poet's hopeless devotion. From Thaïs comes the Méditation, a slow violin solo with orchestra that has become a concert piece in its own right and is many listeners' first taste of him.

Start with the Méditation, then commit an evening to Manon, his most loved opera.