Jules Massenet by Jean-Christophe Branger

The author has sifted through the Souvenirs written by the composer, cross-checking them with testimonies, press reports, correspondence. He demonstrates the importance of women in his rise (starting with his mother and his sister) and details the developments of a shared sensitivity between “phases of discouragement” and “episodes of joy or intense creativity”. The young piano virtuoso fascinated by Wagner (for whom he turned the pages during the master's stay in Paris) became the beloved student of Ambroise Thomas. He won the Prix de Rome thanks to the enthusiastic support of Berlioz and stayed at the Villa Medici: a happy period for Massenet, marked by the meeting of his future wife. Uncommonly open-minded (notably in his composition class at the Conservatory), willingly altruistic, he is now a master who “never expresses his opinions at random and rarely reveals the depth of his thoughts, this which will often be blamed on him.

Republican beliefs

If this member of the Institute “castigates the modernism of his time”, his republican and progressive convictions shine through in his music, explains Branger: Brumaire, The Rosati, Therese celebrate the revolutionary era without Manichaeism, the Alsatian scenes reflect the nostalgia for lost territories and not any spirit of revenge, the oratorio The Promised Land goes against the anti-Semitism exacerbated by the Dreyfus affair… Above all, Branger sheds light on the genesis of a multitude of masterpieces and scores sometimes lost or destroyed. It also arouses curiosity to discover forgotten beauties, such as L’Adorable Belboula comic gem from 1874.

Jules Massenet by Jean-Christophe Branger. Fayard, 1068 p., €49.