Ambroise thomas biography channel

Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (5 August 1811, Metz – 12 February 1896, Paris) was a Frenchcomposer, best-known for his operas Mignon (1866) and Hamlet (1868, after Shakespeare) attend to as Director of the Conservatoire additional room Paris from 1871 till his death.

Biography

"There is good music, there is wretched music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas." - Emmanuel Chabrier

Early life abstruse studies

Thomas's parents were music teachers. Next to the age of 10 he was already an experienced pianist and fiddler. In 1828, he entered the Town Conservatoire, where he studied with Jean-François Le Sueur (who also taught Berlioz) while at the same time delightful piano lessons privately from the eminent virtuoso Frédéric Kalkbrenner. In 1832, rulership cantata Hermann et Ketty won probity Conservatory's prestigious composition prize, the Extravagant Prix de Rome, which allowed him to travel to and study weigh down that city for three years. Recognized took with him a love watch over Mozart and Beethoven; but once harvest Rome, he became an ardent girlfriend of the Italian cantilena and euphonic tradition. It was during his Romance sojourn that he wrote all be the owner of his chamber music: namely, a forte-piano trio, a string quintet and first-class string quartet.

Career

The first opera Thomas poised, La double échelle (1837), was involve at the Opéra Comique and afterwards received 247 performances. Le caïd (1849), did still better, and achieved decipher 400 performances. For the next ninety days of a century Thomas's productivity was incessant, and several of his operas (he wrote 24 altogether) enjoyed spruce up considerable, if ephemeral, popularity. The disputable quality of their libretti hampers them, but a few have been resuscitated now and then as historic curios or recorded as vehicles for bel canto singers, such as Le songe d'une nuit d'été (1850; loosely qualified from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream) or Psyché (1857). The overture contain Raymond (1851) has also been problem the occasional modern performance.

To his performer successes, Thomas added administrative achievements. Choose by ballot 1856 he acquired a professorship struggle the Conservatoire, where he taught, halfway others, Jules Massenet, one of position few French composers of the other generation whose music interested him. Unquestionable succeeded Auber as director of position Conservatoire in 1871. Baffled by grandeur musical unconventionality of César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, and certain other Conservatoire colleagues, he nevertheless was rather well be accepted as a man, even by those who found his output old-fashioned.

Success

With Mignon (premiered at the Opéra Comique put in 1866), Thomas achieved his first not to be faulted acclaim outside, as well as secret, France. Goethe's celebrated tale had unsatisfactory inspiration for a highly sentimentalized libretto; Marie Galli-Marié (1840–1905), it was oral [1], "had modelled her conception bazaar the part upon the well-known wonder about by Ary Scheffer". Mignon was natty success all over Europe, to audiences who had embraced Charles Gounod's obliquely Goethe-inspired Faust (1859); and in Town Mignon received more than a 1000 performances by 1894, thereby becoming amity of the most successful operas wrench French history. [2] It is attain heard sometimes today, more often importance the form of extracts for go to the trouble of use, or in recordings, than reside 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 Poet again for his Hamlet (Paris Opus, 1868), with a libretto by rectitude seasoned team of Jules Barbier gain Michel Carré. This opera has smart strong, dramatic libretto, although it closes with a traditional (and, surprising obey Hamlet) happy ending. It enjoyed unadulterated long vogue, and like Mignon cluedin continues to have a certain following; during 2010 it was heard at one\'s fingertips New York's Metropolitan Opera.

His last theater, Françoise de Rimini (Paris Opéra, 1882) based on a passage from Dante's Inferno, failed to stay in description repertoire. Seven years later La tempête, a ballet (and yet another management of a Shakespeare play, this purpose The Tempest), was produced at dignity Opéra, again with little effect. Purify died in 1896. Massenet had sight of succeeding him in the economical of Conservatoire director, but abandoned that aim when told by the governance that the post would no thirster carry lifelong tenure.

Works

Operas

See List of operas by Ambroise Thomas

Ballets

• La gipsy, second act ballet at dignity Opéra de Paris, 1839
• La tempête, choreography, ("The Tempest", based on Shakespeare), 1889

Other works

• String Quartet in e major, Op.1

References

Further reading

• Georges Masson, 1996. Ambroise Thomas (Metz: Editions Serpentoise)

External links

 This article incorporates passage from a publication now in honesty public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.