Massenet Festival
Massenet Festival (or Festival Massenet in French) is a biennale festival of music by French composer, Jules Massenet held in Saint-Étienne, France, close to the area where the composer was born. The first Massenet Festival took place in November 1990 when the opera Cléopâtre and the oratorio La Vierge were presented. In recent years, performances have been given in the Grand Théâtre Massenet, one of the theatres of the Opéra Théâtre de Saint-Etienne, and formerly known as L'Esplanade.
History
Following the initial success of staging Massenet's Amadis in 1988 during an "unofficial" festival of his work, the organizers decided to regularly fund these festivals starting in 1990. However, because the L' Esplanade opera house in Saint-Étienne burned down in October 1998, the originally planned next festival was delayed for more than half a year.
Thus initial founders of the Festival were Jean-Louis Pichon (director and principal producer) and Patrick Fournillier (musical director and conductor).
Later Festival highlights
In 1992, Esclarmonde was staged (with the participation of Denia Mazzola Gavazzeni in the title role), while the Third Massenet Festival in 1994 brought revivals of such operas as Grisélidis, Panurge, and Le Cid.
Over the following years, the other Massenet operas have been presented:
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Recordings
So far, only those festival performances before 1995 have been released on audio CD (under the label Koch-Schwann) and are available to the public. [3]
See also
References
Notes
- ^ David Stevens "A Massenet is born again", Internatiuonal Herald Tribune (on nytimes.com), 19 November 2003. Review of the 2003 Festival
- ^ Jose Irurzun, "Massenet, Ariane", review on www.musicweb-international.com Retrieved 22 February 2013
- ^ Works of Massenet, including Festival recordings at amazon.com