Prolific French composer, born 12 May 1842 in Montaud (near Saint-Étienne), France and died 13 August 1912 in Paris, France.
He studied composition with Ambroise Thomas and Charles Gounod and won a Grand Prix de Rome in 1863. Massenet concentrated his career on writing operas expressing mainly tender feelings and staging historical heroes and (especially) heroines. He wrote 27 operas including Le Roi de Lahore (1877), Manon (1884), Le Cid (1885), Werther (1892) and Thaïs (1894). In 1878 he was appointed professor of composition at the Paris conservatory; among his pupils are the composers Ernest Chausson, Gustave Charpentier, Reynaldo Hahn, Charles Koechlin, Alfred Bruneau, Gabriel Pierné, Paul Vidal, Xavier Leroux, Henri Rabaud, George Enescu and Florent Schmitt.