Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet was born on 12 May 1842 in Montaud and died in Paris on 13 August 1912. He was six years old when his family moved to Paris in 1848. He entered the Conservatoire at the age of eleven. He studied piano with Adolphe Laurent, and won a first prize in piano in 1859 and a first prize in counterpoint in 1863. Massenet won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1863 with his cantata David Rizzio, then was admitted to the Villa Medici. There he met Franz Liszt. They became friends, and Liszt entrusted him with several pupils. Among them, his future wife: Louise-Constance known as "Ninon" de Gressy.
Massenet returned to Paris in 1867 and had his opera La Grand-Tante performed. His first successes came with the symphonic suite Pompeia, the oratorio Marie-Madeleine in 1873, and the operas Don César de Bazan and Le Roi de Lahore. His successes were later repeated with Manon, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1884; Werther, composed in 1886 and premiered in Vienna in 1892; Don Quichotte, premiered in Monaco in 1910.
Appointed professor of composition at the Conservatoire in 1878, Massenet's students included Alfred Bruneau, Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Georges Enesco, Henry Février, Reynaldo Hahn, Charles Koechlin, Albéric Magnard, Max d'Ollone, Gabriel Pierné, Henri Rabaud and Florent Schmitt. At the age of thirty-six, he entered the Académie des beaux-arts. He is the youngest of the academicians.