The best of Massenet?

[Alan Howe]

...oh, and as far as tenors are concerned, I forgot to mention José Luccioni, who featured on a 1946 recording of Samson et Dalila. Again, he'd be in demand all over the world today.

[Alan Howe]

....not to be confused with the French-Corsican, Georges Liccioni.

Where are all the great French-tradition tenors today?

[Jonathan]

I have a recording of his complete piano music performed by Maurizio Zaccaria but haven't had a chance to play it yet as we've been away on holiday.  I'm going to rectify that situation later in the week!

Does anyone have any opinion on his piano music?

[mjmosca]

Jose Luccioni is excellent in the 1946 Samson recording, and also recorded excerpts from Otello. Another outstanding Corsican tenor was Cesar Vezzani- an extraordinary, powerful "compact" voice. He recorded Faust in 1931, I think, with Marcel Journet, and had a very long career.

There is a fascinating CD of Des Grieux's "Le Reve" as recorded by 36 different tenors of history- some famous, some not. All are interesting.

[Alan Howe]

Esclarmonde still does it for me. Pure hokum it may be, but what magnificent hokum! Especially in the Decca/Bonynge recording. Soon it'll be fifty years since it came out. Where does time go?

[Mark Thomas]

Yep, Esclarmonde for me too. That was only the second complete opera LP set I bought and the sheer musical spectacle of the Prelude, with the Emperor Phorcas intoning between massive organ chords and then the sweeping entry of the chorus still thrills me after all these years. I love almost everything Massenet wrote, but Esclarmonde remains my favourite.

[Gareth Vaughan]

I've always wanted to hear the 1894 version of Thais. There is some very interesting music which was cut from that score. But, to my knowledge, it has never been recorded.

[BerlinExpat]

The original ballet music of La tentation from act one of Thais is on Naxos 8.573123 with the Barcelona Symphony Orchestra under Patrick Gallois. All twenty four minutes sixteen seconds of it!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Yes. Thanks. I already have that and it's lovely, but there was quite a lot of vocal music cut and/or replaced and some of it looks really interesting.

[BerlinExpat]

A resuscitation job for Bru Zane then!

[Gareth Vaughan]

That would be wonderful.

[Maury]

Glad I passed the test. It took me 3 hours of extensive research I might add.

Anyway I want to thank the OP for starting a thread on poor Jules Massenet. Yes he was a great operatic composer - one of the greatest. Unfortunately  he lived during the era of Wagner so of course he merited no interest. It's also a sad fact that the French are so dismissive of their own artists.

Anyway I wanted to mention Massenet's late opera Ariane alongside the others mentioned here. Finally a legit CD issue of this opera has been issued in a beautiful book format with CDs included. Originally the opera was performed by the St Etienne opera which specializes in Massenet. There was an in house recording of that performance that came out on an unofficial CD recording. Recently however the Munchner Rundfunk (Laurent Campellone conductor) issued the conventional CDs as noted above. Really a marvelous opera and performance. Ariane of course is Ariadne. In Massenet's version Ariadne commits suicide at her abandonment by Theseus. The sequel Bacchus mentioned by a poster earlier from the few bits I have heard is significantly inferior to Ariane. I have no knowledge as to whether  Strauss  was even aware of this Massenet opera on Ariadne composed a few years before his own marvelous version.