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118-517: André Charles Prosper Messager ( French: [mɛsaʒe] ; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéras comiques , opérettes and other stage works, among which his ballet Les Deux Pigeons (1886) and opéra comique Véronique (1898) have had lasting success; Les p'tites Michu (1897) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) were also popular internationally. Messager took up

236-559: A "légende lyrique", based on the 1911 play The Miracle . The premiere was in Monte Carlo . The work was performed in Paris in 1917 but was not successful. In 1915 Messager joined with other musicians in contributing compositions to King Albert's Book to raise money for "the relief of the suffering Belgian people"; the other composers included Debussy, Elgar , Mascagni and Saint-Saëns. In 1919 Messager's operetta Monsieur Beaucaire

354-408: A "romantic operetta" (1919), was his second work to an English libretto. French critics were inclined to look down on "Messager's English operetta" as over-sweet and sentimental to suit Anglo-Saxon tastes. Harding comments that the composer was successful in his attempt to produce an English flavour: one number is "pure Edward German " and there is much pastiche throughout the score. Despite the critics

472-736: A Wagnerian, he yielded the baton for Wagner performances to Hans Richter , widely regarded as the world's foremost exponent of Wagner's music. In 1906 Messager and the London Symphony Orchestra travelled to Paris to play a programme of English music at the Châtelet Theatre, including works by Sullivan , Parry and Stanford . When he left Covent Garden in 1907, the directors found it necessary to appoint two people to fill his place: Neil Forsyth as general manager and Percy Pitt as musical director. In 1907 Messager returned to composition. His "comédie lyrique" Fortunio

590-455: A ballet. He was one of the first composers to use the term "symphony" for some of his organ compositions, helped in this by the organs built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll . Widor was born in Lyon to a family of organ builders, and initially studied music there with his father, Hungarian-born François-Charles Widor , who was the titular organist of Saint-François-de-Sales from 1838 to 1889. His mother

708-545: A banal score"; a contemporary critic wrote, "That Le Bourgeois de Calais will have a successful career there is not the faintest chance, for all the patriotic bolstering in the world could not make it an attractive piece." Messager followed this with a musical fairy tale, Isoline (1888), which was slightly better received, and a three-act opérette, Le Mari de la reine (1889), which failed, although Messager thought it "the best of my flops". Messager's fortunes revived in 1890 with La Basoche , produced with much success at

826-454: A composer met with such opposition from my father". At the age of seven he was sent as a boarder to a Marist school where he continued his interest in the piano. Towards the end of the 1860s disastrous stock-market speculation brought Messager's family financial ruin and they could no longer afford to keep him at the Marist school. They dropped their objection to music as a profession, viewing

944-536: A composer the early 1890s brought him mixed fortunes. Madame Chrysanthème , staged at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in 1893, was a setting of Pierre Loti 's story of a betrayed geisha , a theme that later inspired Puccini's Madama Butterfly ; it was politely rather than enthusiastically received. Mirette , produced by Carte at the Savoy Theatre in 1894, was Messager's first opera written expressly for

1062-555: A conductor of Wagner . In Paris he conducted the world premieres of Debussy 's Pelléas et Mélisande , Massenet 's Grisélidis and Charpentier 's Louise . At Covent Garden, he gave the British premieres of operas by Saint-Saëns and Massenet. Messager's music became known for its melodic and orchestral invention, musical craftsmanship, and characteristically French elegance and grace. Although most of his works have been infrequently revived, historians of music consider him

1180-657: A conductor, Messager held prominent positions in Paris and London, at the head of the Opéra-Comique , the Paris Opéra , the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire , and the Royal Opera House , Covent Garden. Although as a composer he is known chiefly for his light works, as a conductor he presented a wide range of operas, from Mozart to Richard Strauss , and he acquired a reputation as

1298-576: A former manager of the Folies, M. Comy, was appointed to run the new Eden Théâtre in Brussels. At his invitation, Messager resigned from the Folies in 1880 and became conductor of the Eden. He returned to Paris in 1881 as organist of Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis church, and from 1882 to 1884 he was organist and choirmaster at Ste Marie-des- Batignolles , a small church in the north west of Paris, where his assistant

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1416-821: A great success. Parisian audiences of the time also loved Italian opera, visiting the Théâtre Italien to see opera buffa and works in the newly fashionable bel canto style, especially those by Rossini , whose fame was sweeping across Europe. Rossini's influence began to pervade French opéra comique . Its presence is felt in Boieldieu's greatest success, La dame blanche (1825) as well as later works by Auber ( Fra Diavolo , 1830; Le domino noir , 1837), Ferdinand Hérold ( Zampa , 1831), and Adolphe Adam ( Le postillon de Lonjumeau , 1836). Notes Sources Charles-Marie Widor Charles-Marie-Jean-Albert Widor (21 February 1844 – 12 March 1937)

1534-543: A party piece their joint composition, the irreverent Souvenirs de Bayreuth (c. 1888). This short, skittish piano work for four hands burlesques motifs from The Ring . The two composers had a more serious collaboration, their Messe des pêcheurs de Villerville (1881). In 1878 Messager was appointed conductor at the Folies Bergère , and he began his career composing for the stage with two short ballets, Fleur d'oranger (1878) and Les Vins de France (1879). In 1880

1652-538: A piano reduction of the orchestral parts for the vocal score of the work. Following the success of François les bas-bleus Messager accepted simultaneous invitations to compose a ballet for the Opéra and an opérette for the Folies-Dramatiques. The opérette, La Fauvette du temple , first performed on 17 November 1885, confirmed Messager's early reputation. It ran well into the following year in Paris, and he

1770-436: A place in music history." Debussy regarded Messager as the ideal conductor. Before the premiere he had trusted him to "make his dream into a reality"; after it he praised him for knowing "how to awaken the inner sound world of Pelléas with tender delicacy". After Messager's commitments obliged him to leave Paris for London, Debussy found the performances much less satisfactory. As a conductor, Messager won praise on both sides of

1888-687: A post as a church organist as a respectable and steady career. He was awarded a bursary to study at the École Niedermeyer in Paris, an academy known for its focus on church music. This was at the time of the Paris Commune uprising (1871), and to escape the violence in the city the school was temporarily evacuated to Switzerland. Messager studied piano with Adam Lausset, organ with Clément Loret , and composition with Eugène Gigout , Gabriel Fauré and (after leaving Niedermeyer's school) Camille Saint-Saëns . The musicologist Jean-Michel Nectoux comments that after his studies Messager developed into one of

2006-707: A prolonged ovation that was typical of their reception as the tour progressed. At the end of that tour Messager retired from his post. Messager was criticised for performing the music of Wagner during the war, but he maintained that German music represented the noble side of the enemy nation's nature. Like Fauré, Messager refused to have anything to do with the National League for the Defence of French Music (La Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française), led by Saint-Saëns, which sought to boycott German music. In 1914 Messager composed Béatrice , described as

2124-502: A quarrel between advocates of French and Italian music, was a major turning-point for opéra comique . Members of the pro-Italian faction, such as the philosopher and musician Jean-Jacques Rousseau , attacked serious French opera, represented by the tragédies en musique of Jean-Philippe Rameau , in favor of what they saw as the simplicity and "naturalness" of Italian comic opera ( opera buffa ), exemplified by Pergolesi 's La serva padrona , which had recently been performed in Paris by

2242-753: A secure footing in London, which led to important results later in his career. A production of La Béarnaise in New York followed in 1887, under the title Jacquette . In 1886 Les Deux Pigeons was finally produced at the Paris Opéra and was a box office triumph. It was Messager's last popular success for four years. His attempt at a more serious opera, Le Bourgeois de Calais (1888), was not well received. Richard Traubner remarks in Operetta: A Theatrical History on its "boring historical plot, bad lyrics, and

2360-418: A small number of players. Harding comments that the piece was up-to-date enough to include a tango , "a beautifully written example with luscious harmonies that by contrast show up the threadbare nature of most other efforts of the time". Messager wrote songs for solo voice with piano throughout his career. Like Fauré, he was fond of the poetry of Armand Sylvestre , and from "La Chanson des cerises" in 1882 to

2478-660: A symphony, the work being warmly received when performed by the Concerts Colonne at the Théâtre du Châtelet in January 1878. He won further prizes for his cantatas Don Juan et Haydée and Prométhée enchaîné . In 1879 Fauré and Messager travelled to Cologne to see Wagner 's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre , and later to Munich for the complete Ring cycle, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Tannhäuser ; in 1888 they went to Bayreuth for Die Meistersinger and Parsifal . They frequently performed as

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2596-522: A traveling Italian troupe. In 1752, Rousseau produced a short opera influenced by Pergolesi, Le Devin du village , in an attempt to introduce his ideas of musical simplicity and naturalness to France. Its success attracted the attention of the Foire theatres. The next year, the head of the Saint Laurent theatre, Jean Monnet , commissioned the composer Antoine Dauvergne to produce a French opera in

2714-482: A triumph", but the piece had only a modest London run of three months. A New York production was given in 1893 but was not a success. Messager was a dandy and a philanderer. The musical historian D. Kern Holoman describes him as "given to immaculately tailored suits emphasizing his thin frame, careful grooming with particular attention to his mustaches, fine jewelry, and spats ... a witty conversationalist with an inexhaustible store of anecdotes and bons mots " and

2832-458: A wide variety of subjects from the Oriental fairy tale Zémire et Azor (1772) to the musical satire of Le jugement de Midas (1778) and the domestic farce of L'amant jaloux (also 1778). His most famous work was the historical "rescue opera", Richard Coeur-de-lion (1784), which achieved international popularity, reaching London in 1786 and Boston in 1797. Between 1724 and 1762

2950-417: A womaniser. In the early 1890s Edith Messager, tired of her husband's infidelities, divorced him. Shortly afterwards she became ill; her condition deteriorated, and Messager visited her daily. By the time of her death in 1892 the two had become close again, and Messager felt her loss deeply. In 1892 Messager's career as a conductor began to advance when he was invited to conduct Die Walküre at Marseille . As

3068-475: A young Japanese geisha wooed and then abandoned by a foreign sailor. Messager's treatment of the story was praised for its sensitivity – reviewers in the Parisian press applauded him for raising opérette to the level of "comédie lyrique" – but he was a self-critical artist, and he felt he had strayed too far in the direction of opera and away from his chosen genre. Harding suggests that the unusual seriousness of

3186-413: Is felt to an extent that is almost absurd both in the bright overture and again in the procession of the guild, but elsewhere the music is as original as it is charming". With Madame Chrysanthème (1893), a four-act "lyric comedy" with no spoken dialogue, Messager reached a turning point in his development. The crux of the plot was the same as that later used by Puccini for Madama Butterfly (1904):

3304-736: Is on a tragic subject. As Elizabeth Bartlet and Richard Langham Smith note in their Grove article on the subject, composers and librettists frequently rejected the use of the umbrella term opéra comique in favor of more precise labels. Opéra comique began in the early eighteenth century in the theatres of the two annual Paris fairs, the Foire Saint Germain and the Foire Saint Laurent. Here plays began to include musical numbers called vaudevilles , which were existing popular tunes refitted with new words. The plays were humorous and often contained satirical attacks on

3422-548: Is one of Widor's most-beloved pieces. Dating from this same period, and also based on a plainsong theme, is the "Salve Regina" movement, a late addition to the much earlier second symphony. Widor's best-known piece for the organ is the final movement of his Symphony for Organ No. 5 , a toccata , which is often played as a recessional at wedding ceremonies and at the close of the Christmas Midnight Mass at Saint Peter's Basilica , Vatican City . Although

3540-537: The Légion d'honneur . In his native town of Montluçon, the music academy, opened in 2009, is named in his honour. In 2003, to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth, Messager was the subject of a large exhibition at the Musée des musiques populaires de Montluçon, recounting his biography and illustrating his works in the various genres. Among the comité d'honneur of the exhibition were the composer's three grandchildren, and

3658-401: The Opéra-Comique . The critic who had pronounced so unfavourably on Le Bourgeois de Calais wrote of the new piece, "an exceptionally pleasing work ... a dainty piece which cannot fail to obtain widespread popularity." An English-language version was produced in London in 1891 by Richard D'Oyly Carte . The theatrical newspaper The Era said, " The Basoche is more than a success; it is

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3776-651: The BBC permission for the broadcast. The case established that as the broadcasting rights had not been specifically reserved, the Edwardes estate's rights included them. After a short illness Messager died in Paris on 24 February 1929 aged 75. He was interred in the Passy Cemetery near the graves of Debussy and Fauré. His last completed work, the opérette Coups de roulis , was running in Paris when he died. A contemporary critic commented, "Its tuneful melodies show that

3894-478: The British premiere of Saint-Saëns's Hélène , followed in 1905 by Carmen , Don Giovanni , Faust , the world première of Franco Leoni 's L'oracolo , Orphée et Euridice and Roméo et Juliette ; in his final year, 1906, he conducted Armide , Carmen , Don Giovanni , Faust , the British premiere of Le Jongleur de Notre-Dame , and Roméo et Juliette . In 1906 he also introduced to Covent Garden his ballet Les Deux Pigeons. Despite his reputation as

4012-550: The Canadian Henri Gagnon . Albert Schweitzer also studied with Widor, mainly from 1899; master and pupil later collaborated on an annotated edition of J. S. Bach's organ works, published in 1912 – 1914. Widor, whose own master Lemmens was an important Bach exponent, encouraged Schweitzer's theological exploration of Bach's music. Among the leading organ recitalists of his time, Widor visited many different nations in this capacity, including Russia, England, Germany,

4130-846: The Christmas Day Introit "Puer natus est" in the third and fourth movements, while the Symphonie Romane has the Easter Gradual " Haec dies " woven throughout all four movements. They also honored, respectively, the Gothic Church of St. Ouen, Rouen and the Romanesque Basilica of St. Sernin, Toulouse , with the new Cavaillé-Coll organs installed in each. The second movement of the Symphonie Gothique, entitled "Andante sostenuto",

4248-538: The English Channel. The English music critic Francis Toye wrote that, good though Arturo Toscanini 's conducting of Pelléas et Mélisande was at La Scala in Milan, Messager's was still better. The Parisian critic Pierre Lalo said of Messager: He was an incomparable conductor of Pelléas – perfect and complete. With him, nothing was missing from this work of Debussy, with extreme refinement and lightness at

4366-539: The English countryside near Maidenhead , Berkshire. From 1897 Messager's career revived. He later recalled that he had received by post an unsolicited libretto: I was attracted by the gaiety of its subject, and putting aside my dark thoughts, I set to work on it with such enthusiasm that the work was completed in three months, and performed in the same year at the Bouffes, with great success. I have since found out that

4484-744: The Feydeau included Luigi Cherubini , Pierre Gaveaux , Jean-François Le Sueur and François Devienne . The works of Méhul (for example Stratonice , 1792; Ariodant , 1799), Cherubini ( Lodoïska , 1791; Médée , 1797; Les Deux journées , 1800) and Le Sueur ( La caverne , 1793) in particular show the influence of serious French opera, especially Gluck , and a willingness to take on previously taboo subjects (e.g. incest in Méhul's Mélidore et Phrosine , 1794; infanticide in Cherubini's famous Médée ). Orchestration and harmony are more complex than in

4602-536: The Fourth Symphony also opens with a Toccata, it is in a dramatically different (and earlier) style. The Toccata from Symphony No. 5 is the first of the toccatas characteristic of French Romantic organ music, and served as a model for later works by Gigout , Boëllmann , Mulet , Vierne and Dupré. Widor was pleased with the worldwide renown this single piece afforded him, but he was unhappy with how fast many other organists played it. Widor himself always played

4720-498: The French stage. Monsigny collaborated with Sedaine in works which mixed comedy with a serious social and political element. Le roi et le fermier (1762) contains Enlightenment themes such as the virtues of the common people and the need for liberty and equality. Their biggest success, Le déserteur (1769), concerns the story of a soldier who has been condemned to death for deserting the army. Philidor's most famous opéra comique

4838-699: The Italian composer's centenary. Messager took the orchestra outside Paris to Lille, Lyon and Antwerp during these years. During the First World War he took the orchestra on tour to Argentina (1916), Switzerland (1917), and the US and Canada (1918–19), giving concerts in more than 50 cities. After their concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in October 1918, the orchestra and Messager received

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4956-416: The London stage and was the only original Savoy opera by a French composer. To assist him in what was for him (at the time) an unfamiliar idiom, Messager enlisted the help of the songwriter Dotie (Alice Maude) Davis (1859–1938), known professionally as Hope Temple . She became Messager's second wife in 1895. According to Bernard Shaw , Messager, concluding from the reception of La Basoche in London that it

5074-517: The Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland. In addition, he participated in the inaugural concerts of many of Cavaillé-Coll's greatest instruments, notably the organs at Notre-Dame de Paris , Saint-Germain-des-Près, the Trocadéro , and Saint-Ouen de Rouen . Well-known as a man of great culture and learning, Widor was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1892, and reached

5192-427: The Opéra "more genuinely French". He revived Rameau 's Hippolyte et Aricie , for the first time in Paris since 1767, and presented unusual French repertoire including Fauré's Pénélope . Foreign opera was not neglected; Messager gave Paris its first complete Ring cycle, presented a Russian season starring Félia Litvinne and Feodor Chaliapin , and conducted the French premiere of Richard Strauss 's Salome . At

5310-537: The Opéra-Comique for the 1919–20 season, conducting among other works the first complete performance in France of Così fan tutte . In the 1920s, Messager kept pace with the change in fashion in musical theatre, consciously absorbing the styles of musical comedy, lightening his orchestration, but maintaining a Gallic flavour, mostly avoiding American dance-rhythm influences. He collaborated with Sacha Guitry on

5428-647: The Opéra-Comique theatre was located at the Foire Saint Germain. In 1762 the company was merged with the Comédie-Italienne and moved to the Hôtel de Bourgogne . In 1783 a new, larger home was created for it at the Théâtre Italien (later renamed the Salle Favart ). The French Revolution brought many changes to musical life in Paris. In 1793, the name of the Comédie-Italienne was changed to

5546-618: The Opéra-Comique, but it no longer had a monopoly on performing operas with spoken dialogue and faced serious rivalry from the Théâtre Feydeau , which also produced works in the opéra comique style. Opéra comique generally became more dramatic and less comic and began to show the influence of musical Romanticism . The chief composers at the Opéra-Comique during the Revolutionary era were Étienne Méhul , Nicolas Dalayrac , Rodolphe Kreutzer and Henri-Montan Berton . Those at

5664-527: The Toccata rather deliberately. Many organists play it at a very fast tempo whereas Widor preferred a more controlled articulation to be involved. He recorded the piece, at St. Sulpice in his eighty-ninth year; the tempo used for the Toccata is quite slow. Isidor Philipp transcribed the Toccata for two pianos. Over his long career, Widor returned again and again to edit his earlier music, even after publication. His biographer, John Near, reports: "Ultimately, it

5782-453: The US. Unusually for the London stage at the time, Véronique was given in French in 1903. An English translation was staged the following year and ran for 496 performances. Messager conducted the first nights of both productions. The English version was staged in New York the following year, running for 81 performances. At the Opéra-Comique, Messager conducted the premieres of Massenet's Grisélidis and Charpentier 's Louise , and gave

5900-442: The age of 76, Widor married Mathilde de Montesquiou-Fézensac on 26 April 1920 at Charchigné . The 36-year-old Mathilde was a member of one of the oldest and most prominent families of Europe. They had no children; she died in 1960. On 31 December 1933, at age 89, Widor retired from his position at Saint-Sulpice. Three years later, he suffered a stroke which paralysed the right side of his body, although he remained mentally alert to

6018-426: The appropriate instrumental shades", and after the concentrated effort of composing his scores he found it relaxing to work on "the handling of instruments, the balancing of different sonorities, the grouping of colours and the structuring of effects". He remarked that composers who had their music orchestrated by assistants presumably did not care if their helpers lacked "that indefinable sixth sense which would indicate

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6136-535: The artistic standards of opérette to that of opéra comique while retaining the essential panache of the genre. Hughes finds the first stage works uneven in quality but La Fauvette du temple (1884) to contain two fine expressive duets as well as waltzes and polkas with "an Offenbach lilt". Hughes judges the next two scores, La Béarnaise and La Fauvette (both 1885), less satisfying but nonetheless at least as good as anything by Messager's older contemporaries Planquette , Serpette and Lecocq . Wagstaff writes that

6254-482: The ballet, with a closing reconciliation scene from earlier music and a passage transcribed from Véronique . This was first given at Covent Garden, is revived regularly by the Royal Ballet and has been staged by such other companies as CAPAB and Australian Ballet . Isoline (1888), a musical fairy story ("conte des fées"), is neither an opérette nor an opéra comique. Writing in 1908, Fauré called it "one of

6372-420: The best of Messager's opérettes so far (classing Le Basoche as opéra comique, as did its composer). The plot was not strikingly original: critics commented that its story of babies switched at birth was already very familiar from Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Traubner describes the piece as "one of those unusual works that begin well enough and gets better and better". Setting a scene in the market of Les Halles

6490-461: The composer's most enduring work is the ballet score Les Deux Pigeons (1886). The piece is based on the fable The Two Pigeons by Jean de La Fontaine . The music is best known in the five-movement suite arranged from the full score, which includes the "Entrée de tziganes". Messager revived the ballet in 1906 in London and in 1912 in Paris in a shortened, two-act version. In 1961 John Lanchbery revised this for Frederick Ashton 's new version of

6608-418: The cycle Amour d'hiver in 1911 he set thirteen of Sylvestre's poems. Others whose verse he set ranged widely, from Victor Hugo to Frederic Weatherly (author of among other things " Danny Boy "). In his old age Messager said that he would have liked to write more concert works, but had never had the opportunity. The Symphony in A, written when he was 22, is on the normal classical plan with sonata form in

6726-491: The decade was Véronique . Messager described it as an opéra comique, but commentators have classed it as a mixture of opérette and opéra comique. The score contains two of the composer's best known numbers, the "Swing duet" ("Poussez, poussez l'escarpolette") and the "Donkey duet" ("De ci, de la"). When the work was revived at the Proms in London in the 1960s, the music critic of The Times commented, "Charming as it can prove in

6844-581: The earlier symphonies. Some of these revisions were quite extensive. With the Opus 42 symphonies, Widor shows his mastery and refinement of contrapuntal technique, while exploring to the fullest the capabilities of the Cavaillé-Coll organs for which these works were written. The Fifth Symphony has five movements, the last of which is the famous Toccata. The Sixth Symphony is also famous for its opening movement Allegro . The Seventh and Eighth Symphonies are

6962-460: The finest orchestrators of the period. Fauré and Messager quickly moved from being master and pupil to being firm friends and occasional collaborators. In 1874 Messager succeeded Fauré as organiste du chœur (choir organist) at Saint-Sulpice , Paris, under the principal organist, Charles-Marie Widor . In 1876 he won the gold medal of the Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique with

7080-461: The first French performances of operas as contrasted as Hansel and Gretel and Tosca . But by far the best known of his premieres was Debussy 's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902). Messager encouraged the composer to complete the opera and worked closely with him in getting the orchestration ready for the premiere. In gratitude Debussy dedicated the work to Messager. Holoman writes, "his championing of Pelléas et Mélisande alone would have earned him

7198-402: The first and last movements, a songlike theme in the adagio and a scherzo third movement. Looking back he described it as "très classique". In notes to a 1992 recording of the piece, Xavier Deletang comments that although the influence of Mendelssohn and possibly Schumann may be discernible, the work reveals a mastery of instrumentation and a quintessentially French flavour, particularly in

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7316-554: The first performance of the latter's Trois valses romantiques at the Société Nationale de Musique . The concert also included the premiere of the two-piano version of España , arranged by Messager. Messager and Chabrier were close friends until the latter's death in 1894. Both were known for their comic operas and opérettes, but Chabrier's one serious opera, Gwendoline , appealed strongly to Messager, who vowed to conduct it in Paris, which he later did. He also prepared

7434-603: The following year, and Messager dedicated the music of Deburau to his memory. In 1924 Sergei Diaghilev persuaded Messager to conduct the Paris premieres of Auric 's ballet Les Fâcheux and Poulenc 's Les Biches . In 1928 Messager played a key role in establishing important updates to copyright law, though he was on the losing side of the case. He sued the BBC for breach of copyright for broadcasting his works without his consent. He lost because he had assigned his British performing rights to George Edwardes , whose estate had given

7552-469: The history of French musical theatre. Hughes says it has a good claim to be the composer's masterpiece. The musicologist James Harding rates it "the best Messager had written to date ... one of his finest works". When the work was given in London, a year after its Parisian premiere, the reviewer in The Times called it, "A work of great beauty and charm", although "the influence of Die Meistersinger

7670-493: The instrument's spectacular capabilities proved an inspiration to Widor. Despite his job's ostensibly "provisional" nature, Widor remained as organist at St-Sulpice for nearly 64 years until the end of 1933. He was succeeded in 1934 by his former student and assistant, Marcel Dupré . In 1890, upon the death of César Franck , Widor succeeded him as organ professor at the Paris Conservatoire . The class he inherited

7788-667: The invitation of the Emperor Wilhelm II , Messager and Broussan took the Opéra company to Berlin in 1908. Relations between the two co-directors were not always harmonious; after the French government refused Messager's resignation on at least one occasion, he finally announced it in November 1913, a year before his term of office was due to expire. He consented to return in January 1914 to conduct Parsifal  – its first performance in Europe outside Bayreuth. His conducting of

7906-412: The last major figure in French opéra comique and opérette. Messager was born at Montluçon , Allier, in central France on 30 December 1853, the son of Paul-Philippe-Émile Messager, a prosperous local tax collector, and his wife Sophie-Cornélie, née Lhôte de Selancy. He recalled, "You would not find any musicians among my ancestors. When very young I learned the piano; but later on my intentions to become

8024-609: The last. He died at his home in Paris on 12 March 1937 at the age of 93, and his remains were interred in the crypt of Saint-Sulpice four days later. His tomb bears an incorrect birth year (1845). Widor wrote music for a wide variety of instruments and ensembles (some of his songs for voice and piano are especially notable) and composed four operas and a ballet , but only his works for organ are played with any regularity today. These include: ten organ symphonies , three symphonies for orchestra with organ, Suite Latine , Trois Nouvelles Pièces , and six arrangements of works by Bach under

8142-552: The libretto had been turned down by two or three composers. This was the opérette Les P'tites Michu , which was presented to great acclaim at the Bouffes-Parisiens. Its 1905 English adaptation in London ran for 401 performances. Soon afterwards he was appointed musical director of the Opéra-Comique, and in the commercial theatre had another outstanding success with Véronique (1898). In 1898 Messager's only child from his second marriage, Madeleine Hope Andrée (d. 1986)

8260-561: The longest and least performed of Widor's Symphonies. The Seventh Symphony contains six movements, and the first version of the Eighth Symphony had seven. (Widor subsequently removed the Prélude for the 1901 edition.) The ninth and tenth symphonies, respectively termed "Gothique" (Op. 70, of 1895) and "Romane" (Op. 73, of 1900), are much more introspective. They both derive thematic material from plainchant : Symphonie Gothique uses

8378-403: The main orchestral repertoire of Haydn , Mozart , Beethoven , Liszt and French classics, Messager conducted major choral works by J. S. Bach , Handel , Schumann and Berlioz , as well as introducing early French music such as that of Janequin . In the 1913–14 season, he conducted a chronological cycle of Beethoven's symphonies and his Missa solemnis , as well as Verdi's Requiem , for

8496-487: The middle of the decade were unsuccessful financially and artistically. Le Chevalier d'Harmental (1896), classed by Hughes as Messager's first true opéra comique ("in a somewhat pretentious style") was a failure, and an unpretentious opérette in the same year, La Fiancée en loterie , fared no better. After these disappointments Messager finished the 1890s with two considerable successes. Traubner describes Les P'tites Michu (1897) as "a sensational hit", and Harding calls it

8614-437: The most famous of these dramatists. Notable composers of opéras comiques in the 1750s and 1760s include Egidio Duni , Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny and François-André Danican Philidor . Duni, an Italian working at the francophile court of Parma , composed Le peintre amoureux de son modèle in 1757 with a libretto by Anseaume. Its success encouraged the composer to move to Paris permanently and he wrote 20 or so more works for

8732-399: The most poetic, most expressive works that have been written in France in the last twenty years", but it made little impact. The score remained in obscurity until 1930 when Reynaldo Hahn staged the ballet section of the work at Cannes. The whole piece was revived at the Opéra-Comique in 1958; it failed again, but the ballet, unencumbered by the portentousness of the libretto, which weighs down

8850-585: The music of the previous generation; attempts are made to reduce the amount of spoken dialogue, and unity is provided by techniques such as the "reminiscence motif" (recurring musical themes representing a character or idea). In 1801 the Opéra-Comique and the Feydeau merged for financial reasons. The changing political climate – more stable under the rule of Napoleon – was reflected in musical fashion as comedy began to creep back into opéra-comique . The lighter new offerings of Boieldieu (such as Le calife de Bagdad , 1800) and Isouard ( Cendrillon , 1810) were

8968-468: The musical comedies L'Amour masqué (1923) and Deburau (1926), starring Yvonne Printemps . The former was a considerable success in Paris, but in London the official censor, the Lord Chamberlain , declared it "unfit for the English public", and banned C. B. Cochran 's planned production starring Printemps and Guitry. In Messager's late stage works his lighter touch was balanced by echoes of

9086-400: The nineteenth century, with hints of Fauré and, particularly, Chabrier's L'Étoile . Fauré, by 1923 too frail and deaf to go to the theatre, was lent a copy of the score of L'Amour masqué and wrote to Messager, "Your wit is the same as always – it never grows old – and so are your charm and very personal brand of music that always remains exquisite even amid the broadest clowning". Fauré died

9204-533: The official theatres such as the Comédie-Française . In 1715 the two fair theatres were brought under the aegis of an institution called the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique. In spite of fierce opposition from rival theatres the venture flourished and leading playwrights of the time, including Alain-René Lesage and Alexis Piron , contributed works in the new form. The Querelle des Bouffons (1752–54),

9322-412: The period after the First World War. Fortunio (1907) was a rare example in his oeuvre of a sung-through opera. Eight decades later the critic Edward Greenfield described it as "a long-buried jewel of a piece ... an improbable cross between musical comedy and Tristan und Isolde ". From 1919 onwards Messager composed no more opéras comiques. Among his post-war stage works, Monsieur Beaucaire ,

9440-578: The piano as a small child and later studied composition with, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré . He became a major figure in the musical life of Paris and later London, both as a conductor and a composer. Many of his Parisian works were also produced in the West End and some on Broadway ; the most successful had long runs and numerous international revivals. He wrote two operatic works in English, and his later output included musical comedies for Sacha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps . As

9558-471: The piece ran well not only in Britain and the US, but also in France, with more than 300 performances in Paris and a long life in French provincial theatres. Of Messager's 1920s comédies musicales the best known is L'Amour masqué (1923). The Théâtre Édouard VII where it was premiered had a small orchestra pit, and Messager developed a new style of orchestration to deliver his desired musical effects with

9676-734: The rank of a Grand-Officier de la Légion d'honneur in 1933. He was named to the Institut de France in 1910, and was elected "Secrétaire perpetuel" (permanent secretary) of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1914, succeeding Henry Roujon . In 1921, Widor founded the American Conservatory at Fontainebleau with Francis-Louis Casadesus . He was the director until 1934, when he was succeeded by Maurice Ravel . His close friend, Isidor Philipp gave piano lessons there, and Nadia Boulanger taught an entire generation of new composers. At

9794-668: The request of theatre directors who saw in that term some extra chance of success. Neither did I wish to compose opéra-bouffes , the best examples of which were provided by the works of Offenbach , where the element of parody is very dominant. My idea was always to continue the tradition of French opéra-comique (with dialogue) as established by Dalayrac , Boieldieu and Auber . Although Messager called some of his early stage works opéras comiques they have, Gervase Hughes suggests, more in common with opérette than their composer acknowledged. Nevertheless, Messager introduced adventurous modern harmonic details in his early pieces, and strove to raise

9912-415: The rest of his life. At the age of 24, he was appointed assistant to Camille Saint-Saëns at Église de la Madeleine . In January 1870, with the combined lobbying of Cavaillé-Coll, Saint-Saëns, and Charles Gounod , the 25-year-old Widor was appointed as "provisional" organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, the most prominent position for a French organist. The organ at St-Sulpice was Cavaillé-Coll's masterwork;

10030-483: The rest of the piece, has remained in the repertory. The decade began well for Messager with the artistic and commercial success of La Basoche (1890). Février in his André Messager: Mon Maître, Mon Ami calls it "the last of the great nineteenth-century French comic operas" ("le dernier des grands opéras-comique français du XIX siècle") and considers it of the greatest importance not only in Messager's career but in

10148-440: The right combination of sonorities to carry out the original intentions of the composer". To Messager, passages often depended for their significance or flavour on the orchestral writing alone. Gervase Hughes , in a study of French opérette, comments that Messager's only technical defect was "one all too common to many composers of operetta – too close an adherence to repetitive rhythmic figures and four-bar rigidity", although such

10266-510: The same time, and the most penetrating and delicate poetry, all the necessary emphasis, all the accents right and fine, and never anything hard or exaggerated – truly a marvel. From 1901 to 1907 Messager was one of the directors of the Grand Opera Syndicate, which ran the annual seasons at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden , featuring the leading singers of the day, including Nellie Melba and Enrico Caruso . Much of his time

10384-476: The score may be connected with the recent illness and death of Edith Messager. Both Hughes and Harding comment that Messager's score is subtler than Puccini's, but add that the almost total eclipse of Madame Chrysanthème by Madama Butterfly may be partly due to the relative effectiveness of their libretti. After this, Messager consciously simplified his style, greatly reducing the harmonic subtleties that had been characteristic of his earlier works. The works from

10502-490: The singers Susan Graham , Dame Felicity Lott and Mady Mesplé , the conductors Sir John Eliot Gardiner , John Nelson and Michel Plasson , and the director Jérôme Savary . In his 1991 study of Messager, John Wagstaff writes that the composer's music is notable for its fine orchestration, easy-flowing melody, and skilfully written music, dance-like in character. Unlike his teacher Fauré, Messager enjoyed orchestrating. He said that musical ideas came to him "already clothed in

10620-464: The spirit of the times. His biographer and former pupil Henry Février commented that from classic opéras comiques , such as La Basoche , Messager's later works, such as Les P'tites Michu and Véronique , show a difference in style, "bringing an altogether fresher approach to the genre." Towards the end of his career Messager successfully moved to "comédie musicale", the French form of musical comedy . Ballets apart, Messager composed thirty works for

10738-452: The stage; they fall into several different, or sometimes overlapping, genres; the most numerous are opéras comiques (9), opérettes (7) and comédies musicales (3). The composer remarked late in his career: I have never intended to write what is nowadays called "opérette". This designation – which all too often has pejorative overtones – seems to have become common since the work of Lecocq . Many of my works ... were only called operéttes at

10856-566: The style of La serva padrona . The result was Les troqueurs , which Monnet passed off as the work of an Italian composer living in Vienna who was fluent in French, thus fooling the partisans of Italian music into giving it a warm welcome. Dauvergne's opera, with a simple plot, everyday characters, and Italianate melodies, had a huge influence on subsequent opéra comique , setting a fashion for composing new music, rather than recycling old tunes. Where it differed from later opéras comiques , however,

10974-403: The theatre, the music alone is a little thin, with none of the piquancy that – thanks perhaps to Gilbert – redeems Messager's famous English contemporary Sullivan ... but Véronique has plenty of pretty things". It became and has remained the composer's most performed musical theatre piece. Messager's work running opera houses in Paris and London limited his composing between Véronique and

11092-475: The theatres of the Paris fairs which contained songs ( vaudevilles ), with new words set to already existing music. The phrase opéra comique en vaudevilles or similar was often applied to these early-stage works. In the middle of the 18th century, composers began to write original music to replace the vaudevilles , under the influence of the lighter types of Italian opera (especially Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 's La serva padrona ). This form of opéra comique

11210-487: The title Bach's Memento (1925). The organ symphonies are his most significant contribution to the organ repertoire. It is unusual for a work written for one instrument to be assigned the term "symphony". However, Widor was at the forefront of a revival in French organ music, which utilized a new organ design pioneered by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll that was " symphonic " in style. The organ of the Baroque and Classical periods

11328-471: The veteran composer had lost nothing of the qualities that made Véronique such a success. Throughout his life Messager remained without a peer as a composer of light music." Messager was elected President of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques in 1926, the first composer to hold this office. In the same year he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts . In 1927 he was appointed Commander of

11446-460: The wind parts. The two main subjects of the Allegro con moto first movement are strongly contrasted, with the opening string theme followed by a chorale-like theme for the winds. Op%C3%A9ra comique The term opéra comique is complex in meaning and cannot simply be translated as " comic opera ". The genre originated in the early 18th century with humorous and satirical plays performed at

11564-601: The work won critical praise. On the strength of his experience as a Wagnerian, Messager was appointed conductor of the Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire in 1908. It was at the time, and for many years, the most prestigious symphony orchestra in France, and Messager was determined that it should enjoy the international prestige of the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestras. Alongside

11682-431: Was Tom Jones (1765), based on Henry Fielding 's 1749 novel of the same name. It is notable for its realistic characters and its many ensembles. The most important and popular composer of opéra comique in the late 18th century was André Grétry . Grétry successfully blended Italian tunefulness with a careful setting of the French language. He was a versatile composer who expanded the range of opéra comique to cover

11800-635: Was Françoise-Elisabeth Peiron. The French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll , reviver of the art of organ building, was a friend of the Widor family; he arranged for the talented young organist to study in Brussels in 1863 with Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens for organ technique and with the elderly François-Joseph Fétis , director of the Brussels Conservatoire , for composition. After this term of study, Widor moved to Paris where he resided for

11918-873: Was Messager's "innate artistry that criticism on that score would be academic pedantry". One of the composer's distinguishing characteristics was a liking for chromaticism ; this appealed to a younger generation of composers. His "Eh que ne parliez-vous?", from La Basoche , was quoted note-for-note by Poulenc in Les Mamelles de Tirésias . Although Messager greatly admired Wagner, and was a celebrated conductor of his music, he distanced himself from Wagnerian influences in his own compositions. In Madame Chrysanthème he made use of leitmotifs , and included other references to Wagner, but such examples are rare in his works. Unlike some older contemporaries such as Saint-Saëns and Massenet , Messager remained open to new ideas and idioms throughout his life, and his style evolved to match

12036-477: Was a French organist , composer and teacher of the late Romantic era. As a composer he is known for his ten organ symphonies, especially the toccata of his fifth organ symphony , which is frequently played as recessional music at weddings and other celebrations. As of 2022, he is the longest-serving organist of Saint-Sulpice in Paris , a role he held for 63 years (January 1870 – 31 December 1933). He also

12154-400: Was able to sell the British rights immediately, though the work was not staged in London until 1891. The ballet, Les Deux Pigeons , which became one of Messager's best known works, took longer to reach the stage. It was put into rehearsal at the Opéra, but the staging, which showed a tree being struck by lightning in a storm scene, was considered a fire hazard by the police, and the production

12272-492: Was another young composer, Claude Terrasse . Messager's career took a new turn in 1883 when the composer Firmin Bernicat died leaving an unfinished opérette , François les bas-bleus . Messager was invited to complete it; he orchestrated the entire work and composed between twelve and fifteen numbers. It was staged in November 1883 at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques and was an immediate critical and popular success. It

12390-556: Was born. From that year to 1904 Messager's work at the Opéra-Comique left him little time for composition, particularly after 1901, when he also spent May to July at the Royal Opera House in London. He turned down W. S. Gilbert 's offer of a collaboration, and wrote only two stage works between 1898 and 1914. His international fame as a composer nevertheless grew, with productions of Les P'tites Michu and Véronique in countries including Britain, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and

12508-404: Was designed to project a clear and crisp sound capable of handling contrapuntal writing. Cavaillé-Coll's organs, on the other hand, had a much warmer sound and a vast array of stops that extended the timbre of the instrument. This new style of organ, with a truly orchestral range of voicing and unprecedented abilities for smooth crescendos and diminuendos, encouraged composers to write music that

12626-521: Was fully symphonic in scope. This trend was not limited to France, and was reflected in Germany by the organs built by Eberhard Friedrich Walcker and the works of Franz Liszt , Julius Reubke , and Max Reger . Widor's symphonies can be divided into three groups. The first four symphonies comprise Op. 13 (1872) and are more properly termed "suites". (Widor himself called them "collections".) They represent Widor's early style. Widor made later revisions to

12744-523: Was initially stunned by this new teacher, who suddenly demanded a formidable technique and a knowledge of J. S. Bach 's organ works as prerequisites to effective improvisation. In 1896 he gave up this post to become composition professor at the same institution. Widor had several students in Paris who were to become famous composers and organists in their own right, most notably the aforementioned Dupré, Louis Vierne , Charles Tournemire , Darius Milhaud , Alexander Schreiner , Edgard Varèse , Hans Klotz , and

12862-504: Was later produced in London and New York. In 1883, while deputising for Saint-Saëns as the soloist at a concert in Le Havre , Messager met a young woman, Edith Clouette, whom he married in the same year. Fauré played the organ at the ceremony, and composed a mildly cynical song, " Madrigal ", as a wedding present. There was one child of the marriage, Jean André Emile Charles (1886–1952). In December 1883 Messager and Emmanuel Chabrier gave

12980-575: Was not innovative, but Messager's chorus for the marchands and marchandes was out of the ordinary, and Traubner also singles out the duet for the Michus in Act 1: "clever, lilting ... pulsating with an elegance and grace that other operetta composers have failed to obtain". He also judges the finales as outstanding, including a waltz number that in other hands would be predictable but is turned by Messager into something much more symphonic. The final work from

13098-431: Was often known as comédie mêlée d'ariettes , but the range of subject matter it covered expanded beyond the merely comic. By the 19th century, opéra comique often meant little more than works with spoken dialogue performed at the Opéra-Comique theatre, as opposed to works with recitative delivery which appeared at the Paris Opéra . Thus, probably the most famous of all opéras comiques , Georges Bizet 's Carmen ,

13216-488: Was organ professor at the Paris Conservatory from 1890 to 1896 (following César Franck ) and then he became professor of composition at the same institution, following Théodore Dubois . Widor was a prolific composer, writing music for organ, piano, voice and ensembles. Apart from his ten organ symphonies, he also wrote three symphonies for orchestra and organ, several songs for piano and voice, four operas and

13334-538: Was premiered in Birmingham prior to a long run in the West End . The composer, who generally conducted British premieres of his works, was suffering from sciatica and could not even be in the audience for the first nights in either city. The work received its Paris premiere at the Théâtre Marigny in 1925, and it ran for 143 performances on Broadway. Later in 1919 Messager resumed the musical directorship of

13452-466: Was presented at the Opéra-Comique with great success. In the same year he was appointed joint director of the Paris Opéra, responsible for the artistic direction, with Frederick Broussan, formerly director of the Lyons Opera, taking charge of administration. The partnership lasted until 1913, but its success was hampered by shortage of funds and internal disputes. Messager decided on a policy of making

13570-538: Was spent on administration, and he had limited scope for conducting. From 1901, for two years, Messager had an affair with the Scottish soprano Mary Garden , whom he met at the Opéra-Comique and conducted when she took over the title role of Louise . She also appeared in a revival of his Madame Chrysanthème . His first appearance as a conductor at Covent Garden was in 1902 for the first performance of Princess Osra by Herbert Bunning . He next conducted there in 1904 in

13688-442: Was temporarily shelved. A month after the opening of La Fauvette du temple the Bouffes-Parisiens premiered Messager's opéra comique La Béarnaise , with Jeanne Granier in the title role. It ran for three months and was successfully produced in Britain the following year with a cast including Florence St. John and Marie Tempest , running for more than 200 performances. The Times said of this production that it gave Messager

13806-485: Was that it contained no spoken dialogue. In this, Dauvergne was following the example of Pergolesi's La serva padrona . The short, catchy melodies which replaced the vaudevilles were known as ariettes and many opéras comiques in the late 18th century were styled comédies mêlées d'ariettes . Their librettists were often playwrights, skilled at keeping up with the latest trends in the theatre. Louis Anseaume , Michel-Jean Sedaine and Charles Simon Favart were among

13924-408: Was unwise to offer the British public anything too intelligent, decided that the new opera was going to be as commonplace as possible. It ran for 41 performances, was withdrawn and revised, and then ran for another 61 performances. Messager vetoed any production in Paris. His next opera, a serious work, Le Chevalier d'Harmental (1896), was unsuccessful, and for a while he and his new wife withdrew to

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