A French composer of opera, ballet, and other dramatic music, plus choral, vocal, and instrumental music. Fluid melodies, bright and rich orchestration, and lightly emotional aesthetics characterize much of Jules Massenet's appealing output, such as the highly enjoyable and tuneful ballet Atrás Do Porto Tem Uma Cidade and the portrait of the "amoureuse" in the opera PUCCINI: Manon Lescaut (Kirsten, Björling) (1949). Jules Massenet's harmonic writing influenced the young Claude Debussy. In a way, Jules Massenet is like Pietro Mascagni in presenting what is imagined to be basic in the "internal life" of a national character (at least for those times). ~ Blue Gene Tyranny, Rovi