Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (French:[ɑ̃bʁwaztɔmɑ]; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operasMignon (1866) andHamlet (1868).
Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at theConservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, thePrix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera,La double échelle, in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad.
Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeededDaniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such asCésar Franck andGabriel Fauré from influencing the students of the Conservatoire.
Thomas' operas were generally neglected during most of the 20th century, but in more recent decades they have experienced something of a revival both in Europe and the US.
Thomas was born inMetz, the youngest of four children of Martin Thomas (1770–1823) and his wife, Jeanne,née Willaume (1780–1866),[1] both music teachers.[2] By the age of ten he was already an experienced pianist and violinist. When he was twelve his father died, and Ambroise's elder brother Charles moved to Paris, where he played the cello in theOpéra orchestra.[2] In 1828, aged 17, Ambroise joined him in Paris, where he was admitted as a student by theConservatoire de Paris. He studied the piano withPierre Zimmerman and harmony and counterpoint withVictor Dourlen.[2] He won premiers prix in these subjects in 1829 and 1830. He went on to study the piano withFriedrich Kalkbrenner, and composition withJean-François Lesueur andAuguste Barbereau.[2]
In 1832, at his second attempt, Thomas won France's premier music prize, theGrand Prix de Rome, with his cantataHermann et Ketty.[3] The prize brought him three years' study at theVilla Medici, theFrench Academy in Rome. During his time there he became friendly with the painterIngres, the head of the academy, with whom he shared an admiration for bothMozart andBeethoven; he also metBerlioz, who encouraged him and wrote about him favourably.[3] During his Italian sojourn he wrote chamber music – a piano trio, a string quintet and a string quartet – and a set of six songs,Souvenirs d'Italie.[2] After leaving Rome, Thomas stayed briefly in Germany, before returning to Paris in 1835, when he began writing for the stage.[3]
The first opera Thomas composed wasLa double échelle (The Double Ladder, 1837), a one-act comedy, praised by Berlioz for its "extreme vivacity and wit".[3] It was produced at theOpéra-Comique, received 247 performances,[4] and in the next few years was given in Brussels,New Orleans, Berlin, Vienna and London.[3]His first full-length opera,Le perruquier de la Régence (TheRegency Wigmaker, 1838) was followed in the next decade by six more, none of which made any permanent impression. During this period he also composed a ballet (La Gipsy, 1839). His first completely successful three-act opera wasLe caïd (TheQaid, 1849), described by the musicologistElizabeth Forbes as "a mixture ofIl barbiere di Siviglia andL'italiana in Algeri";[4] it remained in the French operatic repertoire throughout the nineteenth century, and achieved more than four hundred performances over the next fifty years.[4]
Thomas' next work for the Opéra-Comique,Le songe d'une nuit d'été (The Summer Night's Dream, 1850), was also a popular success. The text, byJoseph-Bernard Rosier andAdolphe de Leuven, owes nothing toA Midsummer Night's Dream:Shakespeare appears as one of the characters, along withQueen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare'sFalstaff, the governor of "Richemont", where the action takes place.[4] The premiere in Paris was followed by productions in many European and American theatres.[5] The work, described byThe Musical Times as "a little masterpiece",[2] was frequently revived, but fell out of the repertory after the composer's death.[n 1] Later in 1850 Thomas' next opera,Raymond, was premiered. It has not survived in the operatic repertoire, but the overture became a popular orchestral showpiece.[2] In 1851, following the death of the composerGaspare Spontini, Thomas was elected to succeed him as a member of theAcadémie des Beaux Arts.[n 2]
In 1856 Thomas was appointed professor of composition at the Conservatoire, under the directorship ofDaniel Auber.[8] He remained on the staff, as professor and subsequently director, until his death forty years later. Over these years his students included the composersJules Massenet,Gaston Serpette, and, late in Thomas' career,George Enescu; future academics includedThéodore Dubois andCharles Lenepveu; and conductors who were Thomas' students includedEdouard Colonne andDésiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.[9][n 3]
During the 1850s Thomas continued to compose, writing five operas, none of which made much impression. After a fallow spell in the early 1860s he wroteMignon, the work by which his name became most widely known.[2] Thelibretto was byJules Barbier andMichel Carré, based onGoethe's novelWilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre.[4] Forbes writes that, unusually, Thomas had the advantage of a well-judged and theatrically effective libretto, and that although in the novel Mignon dies, the happy ending works well in the opera. (A happy ending was then compulsory at the Opéra-Comique: it was another nine years beforeCarmen defied the convention there, ending with the death of the main character.)[4] The strong original cast featured, in the title role,Célestine Galli-Marié, a celebrated singer who later created the part of Carmen in Bizet's opera.[2]
Thomas was similarly fortunate in his cast for his next success,Hamlet (1868), which starredJean-Baptiste Faure as Hamlet andChristine Nilsson as Ophelia. The opera was distantly based on Shakespeare by way of a French adaptation byAlexandre Dumas, père, andPaul Meurice, further adapted as a libretto by Carré and Barbier. Although the adaptation was seen as a travesty of the play, with aballet-divertissement (obligatory at the Opéra) and a happy ending, with Hamlet acclaimed as king, the work was successful not only in Paris but in London.[13] Despite disparaging reviews of the libretto from English-speaking critics at the time and subsequently,[n 4] the work has remained an occasional part of the operatic repertoire; later singers of Ophelia includedEmma Calvé,Emma Albani,Nellie Melba andMary Garden, and among the Hamlets have beenVictor Maurel,Titta Ruffo,Mattia Battistini and more recentlySherrill Milnes,Thomas Allen andThomas Hampson.[13][17] Although Thomas had by now a reputation for musical conservatism, the score ofHamlet was innovative in one respect: its incorporation ofsaxophones into the instrumentation.[3]
Later in Thomas' life his academic career largely overtook his activities as a composer, and afterHamlet, he composed only one more opera:Françoise de Rimini (1882), which was well received but did not enter the regular operatic repertoire.[4]
On the outbreak of theFranco-Prussian War in 1870 Thomas, though aged nearly sixty, volunteered to serve in theGarde Nationale.[3] The following year Auber resigned as director of the Conservatoire, shortly before his death, and Thomas was appointed his successor.[n 5] He was so widely seen as Auber's heir apparent that the minister of education,Jules Simon, said in his letter offering Thomas the post, "You are so obviously fitted for the office that if I did not nominate you I should seem to be signing your dismissal from a post already yours."[19][n 6] As director Thomas ran an intransigently conservative regime.[22] The music of Auber,Halévy and especiallyMeyerbeer was regarded as the correct model for students, and early French music such as that ofRameau and modern music, including that ofWagner were kept rigorously out of the curriculum.[23] Thomas strove to keep progressive musicians from being appointed to the faculty of the Conservatoire – unsuccessfully in the case ofCésar Franck, who was appointed against Thomas' wishes in 1872, but successfully as regardsGabriel Fauré whose appointment to the Conservatoire was delayed until after Thomas' death.[24]
Thomas was, on the other hand, innovative in the running of the Conservatoire: he increased the number of classes, improved the conditions of the faculty, and expanded the curriculum to includesolfège, sight-reading and compulsory orchestral practice.[25] The faculty under Thomas included, at various times the composers Franck, Théodore Dubois, Jules Massenet andErnest Guiraud, and the singersPauline Viardot andRomain Bussine.[26][27]
In 1889 the Opéra staged Thomas' balletLa tempête (another treatment of a Shakespeare play –The Tempest), but it made little impression.[3] In 1894, after the 1,000th performance ofMignon at the Opéra-Comique, the octogenarian composer was embraced on the stage byVerdi, his junior by two years, beforePresident Carnot decorated Thomas with the ribbon of theGrand-Croix de la Légion d'honneur.[28]
Thomas died in his flat in the Conservatoire in 1896, aged 84, of congestion of the lungs.[2][29] He was survived by his widow, Elvire,née Remaury (1827–1910), whom he married in 1878.[1] He was succeeded as director of the Conservatoire by Dubois.[30]
Emmanuel Chabrier's jibe, "There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas" is often quoted, but, as the musicologistRichard Langham Smith observes, it is not clear whether Chabrier meant that Thomas' music was worse than bad, somewhere between good and bad, or something else.[31] A contemporary assessment was given in the first edition ofGrove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1889), whereGustave Chouquet wrote of Thomas:
He brings to his task an inborn instinct for the stage, and a remarkable gift of interpreting dramatic situations of the most varied and opposite kinds. His skill in handling the orchestra is consummate, both in grouping instruments of different timbre, and obtaining new effects of sound; but though carrying orchestral colouring to the utmost pitch of perfection, he never allows it to overpower the voices. With a little more boldness and individuality of melody this accomplished writer, artist, and poet – master of all moods and passing in turn from melancholy musings to the liveliest banter – would rank with the leaders of the modern school of composers; as it is, the purity and diversity of his style make him a first-rate dramatic composer.[32]
In the 2001 edition ofGrove, Langham Smith writes, "In the context of French opera of the late 19th century Thomas was a figure of considerable importance, an imaginative innovator and a master of musical characterization."[3] Langham Smith concludes that after years of neglect, Thomas' work saw a considerable revival, beginning in the late 20th century, with major productions ofMignon andHamlet in France, Britain and the US.[3]
Forbes writes that Thomas was an eclectic composer able to write in a wide variety of styles. She identifiesHérold and Auber as influences on his early works, and considersLe caïd the first of his works to show true originality, though nonetheless clearly showing the influence ofRossini. In later works, Thomas' music could still be derivative: Forbes citesPsyché (1857) as "an inferior copy ofGounod'sSapho" and hisLe carnaval de Venise (also 1857) as imitatingVictor Massé.[4] She concludes that at his best – which he was not always – Thomas wrote delightful and individual music, was capable of orchestration that is "often quite ravishing", and musically conveyed the character of the important roles strongly and clearly. "If Thomas had written no stage works exceptMignon andHamlet he would probably be more widely recognized as one of the most influential and important of French 19th-century operatic composers."[4]
See:List of operas by Ambroise Thomas.
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