Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas was born August 5, 1811. Thomas's parents were music teachers. By the age of 10, he was already an experienced pianist and violinist. In 1828, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Jean-François Le Sueur(who also taught Berlioz) while at the same time taking piano lessons privately from the famous virtuoso Frédéric Kalkbrenner. In 1832, his cantata Hermann et Ketty won the Conservatory's prestigious composition prize, the Grand Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to and study in that city for three years. He took with him a love for Mozart and Beethoven; but once in Rome, he became an ardent admirer of the Italian cantilena and melodic tradition. It was during his Italian sojourn that he wrote all of his chamber music: namely, a piano trio, a string quintet and a string quartet.
The first opera Thomas composed, La double échelle (1837), was produced at the Opera Comique and subsequently received 247 performances. Le caïd (1849), did still better, and achieved over 400 performances. For the next quarter of a century Thomas's productivity was incessant, and several of his operas (he wrote 24 altogether) enjoyed a considerable, if ephemeral, popularity. The questionable quality of their libretti hampers them, but a few have been revived now and then as historic curiosities or recorded as vehicles for bel canto singers, such as Le songe d'une nuit d'été (1850; not based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but rather an English fantasy with Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare himself, and Shakespeare's fictional character Falstaff) or Psyché(1857). The overture to Raymond (1851) has also been given the occasional modern performance.
To his theatrical successes, Thomas added administrative achievements. In 1856 he acquired a professorship at the Conservatoire, where he taught, among others, Jules Massenet, one of the few French composers of the younger generation whose music interested him. He succeeded Auber as director of the Conservatoire in 1871. Baffled by the musical unconventionality of César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and certain other Conservatoire colleagues, he nevertheless was rather well liked as a man, even by those who found his output old-fashioned.
With Mignon (premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1866), Thomas achieved his first great acclaim outside, as well as within, France. Goethe's celebrated Wilhelm Meister had provided inspiration for a highly sentimentalized libretto; Marie Galli-Marié (1840–1905), it was said "had modelled her conception of the part upon the well-known picture by Ary Scheffer". Mignon was a success all over Europe, to audiences who had embraced Charles Gounod's indirectly Goethe-inspired Faust (1859); and in Paris Mignon received more than a thousand performances by 1894, thereby becoming one of the most successful operas in French history. It is still heard sometimes today, more often in the form of extracts for concert use, or in recordings, than in complete stagings. One of its arias, "Connais-tu le pays", was for generations among the most famous operatic excerpts by any composer.
Thomas turned to Shakespeare again for his Hamlet (Paris Opera, 1868), with a libretto by the seasoned team of Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. This opera has a strong, dramatic libretto, although it closes with a traditional (and, surprising for Hamlet) happy ending.
Astonishingly, in the midst of this period of fierce activity, Thomas found time and strength to volunteer for service in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Afterwards he became director of the Paris Conservatory; in this post, which he held for the remainder of his life, he proved at first to be an innovative music educator. In later years, however, he came to display resentment toward a new generation of composers, including Fauré and Debussy -- as his last opera, Françoise de Rimini (1882), failed to find success -- and became a far more rigid, conservative figure.**
His last opera, Françoise de Rimini (Paris Opéra, 1882) based on a passage from Dante's Inferno, failed to stay in the repertoire. Seven years later La tempête, a ballet (and yet another treatment of a Shakespeare play, this time The Tempest), was produced at the Opéra, again with little effect.
Thomas was not entirely eclipsed in his own time, however: in 1894, following the thousandth performance of Mignon, he became the first composer ever to be awarded the Grand Croix of the Legion of Honor.**
Thomas died in Paris, France, February 12, 1896.
The above biography was written, in parts, by two different persons. The two paragraphs marked with ** were written by Bruce Eder, which I found on allmusic.com. The rest of the biography can be found on wikipedia.com. I accessed both websites on June 22, 2016.
The first opera Thomas composed, La double échelle (1837), was produced at the Opera Comique and subsequently received 247 performances. Le caïd (1849), did still better, and achieved over 400 performances. For the next quarter of a century Thomas's productivity was incessant, and several of his operas (he wrote 24 altogether) enjoyed a considerable, if ephemeral, popularity. The questionable quality of their libretti hampers them, but a few have been revived now and then as historic curiosities or recorded as vehicles for bel canto singers, such as Le songe d'une nuit d'été (1850; not based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but rather an English fantasy with Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare himself, and Shakespeare's fictional character Falstaff) or Psyché(1857). The overture to Raymond (1851) has also been given the occasional modern performance.
To his theatrical successes, Thomas added administrative achievements. In 1856 he acquired a professorship at the Conservatoire, where he taught, among others, Jules Massenet, one of the few French composers of the younger generation whose music interested him. He succeeded Auber as director of the Conservatoire in 1871. Baffled by the musical unconventionality of César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and certain other Conservatoire colleagues, he nevertheless was rather well liked as a man, even by those who found his output old-fashioned.
With Mignon (premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1866), Thomas achieved his first great acclaim outside, as well as within, France. Goethe's celebrated Wilhelm Meister had provided inspiration for a highly sentimentalized libretto; Marie Galli-Marié (1840–1905), it was said "had modelled her conception of the part upon the well-known picture by Ary Scheffer". Mignon was a success all over Europe, to audiences who had embraced Charles Gounod's indirectly Goethe-inspired Faust (1859); and in Paris Mignon received more than a thousand performances by 1894, thereby becoming one of the most successful operas in French history. It is still heard sometimes today, more often in the form of extracts for concert use, or in recordings, than in complete stagings. One of its arias, "Connais-tu le pays", was for generations among the most famous operatic excerpts by any composer.
Thomas turned to Shakespeare again for his Hamlet (Paris Opera, 1868), with a libretto by the seasoned team of Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. This opera has a strong, dramatic libretto, although it closes with a traditional (and, surprising for Hamlet) happy ending.
Astonishingly, in the midst of this period of fierce activity, Thomas found time and strength to volunteer for service in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Afterwards he became director of the Paris Conservatory; in this post, which he held for the remainder of his life, he proved at first to be an innovative music educator. In later years, however, he came to display resentment toward a new generation of composers, including Fauré and Debussy -- as his last opera, Françoise de Rimini (1882), failed to find success -- and became a far more rigid, conservative figure.**
His last opera, Françoise de Rimini (Paris Opéra, 1882) based on a passage from Dante's Inferno, failed to stay in the repertoire. Seven years later La tempête, a ballet (and yet another treatment of a Shakespeare play, this time The Tempest), was produced at the Opéra, again with little effect.
Thomas was not entirely eclipsed in his own time, however: in 1894, following the thousandth performance of Mignon, he became the first composer ever to be awarded the Grand Croix of the Legion of Honor.**
Thomas died in Paris, France, February 12, 1896.
The above biography was written, in parts, by two different persons. The two paragraphs marked with ** were written by Bruce Eder, which I found on allmusic.com. The rest of the biography can be found on wikipedia.com. I accessed both websites on June 22, 2016.
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String quartet in E-minor, Op.1 (1833)
Mov.I: Allegro Moderato 00:00 Mov.II: Menuetto 09:22 Mov.III: Andante 14:54 Mov.IV: Rondo: Allegro vivace 20:18 The Daniel String Quartet: Benzion Shamir (Violin 1), Misha Furman (Violin 2), Itamar Shimon (Viola), Xvi Maschkowski (Cello) Notes published with the recording on YouTube: The String Quartet in e minor, though numbered as his opus 1, was by no means his first work. To begin with, the Prix de Rome was a composition prize and Thomas had won it based on his composition of a cantata. He had written quite a number of other works even before entering the Conservatory. The quartet was his first work, after his student days, in his opinion worthy of an opus number. This light but brilliantly written quartet, dating from 1833, shows how well Thomas had assimilated the musical language of the Italian vocal and operatic style and one can clearly hear the influence of Rossini and Paganini, two of its leading advocates at that time. In the first movement, Allegro moderato, the lovely but brooding main theme is first presented as a duet between the cello and first violin but then all of the voices join in its development. Short stormy episodes periodically punctuate longer, cantabile sections. The second movement is marked Menuetto, but the music, characterized by fast descending and then ascending passages, is closer in feel to a scherzo than a minuet. The lovely trio section is a waltz in which the viola and then the cello are given long singing passages. Verdi, who knew Thomas' music well, must surely have borrowed this idea for his own quartet as the trio section to his quartet so closely resembles what Thomas did here. The third movement, Andante, is clearly written in an operatic fashion. Each voice shares the beautiful theme in short responsions. In hearing the thematic material of the toe-tapping finale, Allegro vivace--Allegretto, one might well guess the composer was Paganini. Here, brilliance comes to the forefront and especially in the exciting conclusion. There is very little like this quartet in the literature and of its kind, it is clearly first rate. |
Overture to Mignon
conductor: Martin Katz, conductor Palazzo dei Congressi Lugano 03-06-1986 "Connais-tu le pays" (an aria) from Mignon
Teresa Berganza, mezzosoprano Juan Antonio Alvarez Parejo, piano Recital in Tokyo 1986 Gavotte from Mignon
Jenny Yun, violin pianist unlisted |