Jules Massenet was born in Montaud, a town in France’s Massif Central which has since been absorbed by the growing city of Saint-Étienne. He was still a boy when his family moved to Paris. As a young man around 1870 he received the encouragement and support of Ambroise Thomas, an established figu... More informationre in the Parisian operatic world.

The works of the mature Massenet that are best remembered today are: the comic opera Manon (1884); the grand opera Le Cid (1885); and the lyric drama Werther (1892).

As Steven Huebner has explained in his recent book on “French Opera at the Fin De Siecle,” Massenet’s version of the story of Manon Lescaut, one of the many versions of this tale of a doomed lover of men and luxury, makes much of her enjoyment of luxury, but makes “relatively little of her sexual allure,” in order to comply with the “family ambiance of the Opéra-Comique." Less information