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Massenet

Jules Massenet (1842–1912) was a French composer who spent nearly two decades as professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, his pupils including Ernest Chausson, Gustave Charpentier, and Reynaldo Hahn. His operas, among them Manon, Werther, and Thaïs, made him the most celebrated French composer of his generation and one of the most performed in Europe, though critics who had admired him in life were quick to dismiss him after his death as too sentimental, too popular, too easy to love. The rehabilitation has been quiet but decisive: Manon and Werther are firmly back in the repertoire, and the Méditation from Thaïs has never left it.

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