Massenet: Esclarmonde and Cendrillon Suites

Romain Rolland once claimed that the spirit of Massenet sleeps at the heart of every Frenchman. The most successful opera composer of his generation in France, Massenet wrote music that has sometimes inspired cynicism and hostility through its particularly sensuous beauty, a quality that has to some seemed facile and superficial. The criticism itself may now appear in the same terms. Massenet coupled technical command with a gift for graceful melody and exercised a strong influence over his successors, perceptible in the work of Debussy and of Ravel, as of Puccini. The very charm and grace of his music was to earn him the nick-name bestowed on him by his enemies, "la fille de Wagner".