Thomas, Ambroise (EN)

Thomas Charles Louis Ambroise, *5 August 1811 Metz, †12 February 1896 Paris, French composer. He was raised in a musical family; his father was a violinist in the local opera orchestra and also a teacher of singing, solfège, piano, string instruments and guitar; his mother, a singer, also gave piano lessons. Intensively trained by his parents, Thomas was considered a child prodigy; by the age of 10, according to contemporary accounts, he was already playing like a professional pianist and violinist. In 1823, after the death of his father, Thomas moved with his mother and brother to Paris, where he studied piano privately with F. Kalkbrenner; in 1828, he was accepted at the conservatory to the class of P. Zimmermann (piano) and J.-F. Le Sueur (composition). He soon gained a reputation as the most talented student; in 1829, he won the university piano competition, in 1830 the violin competition and the competition in harmony and counterpoint, and in 1832 he received the Prix de Rome for the cantata Hermann et Ketty. During his stay in Rome, he became friends with the painters H. Flandrin and J.A.D. Ingres and under their influence, he became interested in Italian Renaissance painting (Raphael, Michelangelo). In accordance with the regulations of the Prix de Rome, he devoted time to studying scores in the libraries of the Sistine Chapel and other churches and monasteries. He attended opera performances in many Italian cities, learning the latest works by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. He also studied and performed compositions by Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, achieving success as a pianist in the salons of the Italian aristocracy. He drew inspiration from this music as the creator of piano miniatures, chamber pieces (including the String Quartet, Op. 1), and songs and religious vocal-instrumental works (including the Requiem). On his way back to Paris, Thomas visited Vienna, Munich, and Leipzig; in early 1836, he returned to Paris, where he began composing operas and ballets.

Thomas’s operatic debut (La double échelle, 1837) at the Opéra Comique won the praise of H. Berlioz (whom Thomas had met in Rome). This work, like Le panier fleuri, was also performed on many stages outside France, including Berlin, Vienna and London, for which Thomas was made a member of the Legion of Honour. Success at the Opéra de Paris was secured by the ballet La gipsy (1839), which was the first and most famous staging by J. Mazilier (Thomas composed the music for it together with F. Benoist and M.A. Marliani). In his next works, Thomas began to work with experienced librettists – A. de Leuven (real name A. de Ribbing) and E. Scribe. The breakthrough operas in his career were Le caïd (1849), Le songe d’une nuit d’été (1850) and Raymond (1851). In recognition of his achievements, Thomas was accepted in 1851 to the Acadèmie des Beaux-Arts as the successor to G. Spontini. In the late 1850s, he was also appointed professor of composition at the Paris Conservatory; over the next 40 years, many outstanding artists graduated from his class: L.A. Bourgault-Ducoudray, T. Dubois and, above all, J. Massenet. Thomas was also active as a juror in choral competitions at this time. Thomas gained international and long-lasting fame for his most famous comic opera to this day.

The success of Mignon made it easier for him to stage another work – Hamlet – at the Paris Opera (1868); Françoise de Rimini, staged there in 1882 with the typical splendour of that stage and at an exceptional vocal level (this applies especially to the leading female role), was also fully appreciated. In 1871, Thomas was appointed director of the Paris Conservatory; he held this position with dedication and passion until the end of his life, trying to constantly improve the profile of education, among others, by introducing new subjects (acoustics, history of music, sight reading, orthophony). In 1895, he chaired the celebrations of the centenary of the Conservatory. Over time, Thomas’s aesthetic views became conservative; he was not inclined to recognise and support new trends in music, works by G. Fauré, C. Debussy and C. Franck, whom he boycotted especially for the Wagnerian influence in his music. In the last years of his life, Thomas received many honours, including in 1894, on the occasion of the thousandth performance of Mignon, he received the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, and from the Italian King Umberto I, through G. Verdi, the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Maurice et Lazare.

Thomas focused his creative inventiveness on stage works. Of his 20 operas, however, only two have stood the test of time: his most outstanding work, Mignon, which was performed more than 1,000 times before World War II, and the opera Hamlet, highly valued during the composer’s lifetime and shortly after his death, then forgotten, and reintroduced to the opera repertoire from around 1980 (numerous productions in European countries and the United States). Thomas’s literary preferences placed Shakespeare’s works at the centre of his interests, which in several cases also became the source of librettos. The composer accepted the librettists’ free approach to the problem of adaptation, including transferring characters from different plays to one libretto (e.g. in the opera Le songe dune nuit d’été) and changing the ending of the action. Thomas showed a tendency and ability to synthesise the operatic styles of his time. He was an exploratory creator, but not entirely certain of his artistic decisions. This is evidenced by the adaptations and new versions of the works, fragments crossed out or added to already finished scores, as well as the double endings in Mignon and Hamlet, one of which is consistent with the literary original, while the other, more optimistic, was adapted to the expectations of the audience of the time (and was therefore dictated by commercial considerations).

Thanks to his long-standing collaboration with the Opéra-Comique, Thomas had an excellent sense of the possibilities offered by French comic opera. Composing virtuoso soprano parts, melodious bass parts, verse forms with refrains saturated with dance rhythms, ballades, barcarolles, romances and lullabies, he referred in particular to the rich legacy of D. Auber and F. Halévy; Thomas’s outstanding work in this genre is Le caïd. However, when the opportunity arose to collaborate with the Opéra de Paris, the composer adapted the score to the time-honoured requirements of that institution, replacing, among other things, spoken dialogues and declamation against a background of music with recitatives. The opera Psyché, the first work composed by Thomas in collaboration with J. Barbier and M. Carré, was initially conceived as a chamber lyric opera; in the course of composition, it transformed into a comic opera, and finally into a 4-act grand opéra. Mignon and Hamlet are often compared to operas by Ch. Gounod: Romeo and Juliet and Faust (the scene in which Mignon changes into Philina’s clothes and looks in the mirror may be associated with the aria of Marguerite with jewels). Thomas did indeed assimilate the assumptions of lyrical opera suggested to him, at least in part, by the content and structure of the librettos; however, he was not an imitator of Gounod; yet, the idea of ​​linking the role of the main character with dance anticipated the concept of the role of Carmen in G. Bizet’s opera. When composing Mignon, Thomas was inspired by two paintings painted and distributed by A. Scheffer, presenting the character of Mignon from the novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre by Goethe. The librettists – Barbier and Carré – created a type of heroine rarely seen in opera, combining the features of a young man and a modest girl. The advantage of the opera is, on the one hand, the subtle lyricism associated with the protagonist, and on the other – the richness of emotions expressed by her. Mignon’s delicate nature is already characterised by the overture through emphasising the sound of the flute and harp. The opera also gained extraordinary success due to its melodiousness, the coloratura vocal part of Filina – Mignon’s rival (the famous concert aria Je suis Titania, sung after the performance – in the default plan – of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Act 2) and the colourful stylisation of gypsy music and pastiche of 18^th-century dances. Hamlet also stands out in Thomas’s operatic output, despite the discrediting assessments of the creators for the carefree attitude to the Shakespearean original. Following the example of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Thomas linked the overture thematically with the opera’s climax scene and the figure of the murdered king’s ghost. In the scene with the performance of the play entitled The Murder of Gonzaga, the composer interestingly used the dramatic power of dance as a means of heightening tension (the finale of Act 2). Thomas raised the role of Ophelia to the leading role, equal to the role of Hamlet. Her aria in Act 2, Adieu, dit-il, ayez foi!, is distinguished by the use of the saxophone as a concertante instrument, while the use of coloratura in the scene of madness (the ballad Pâle et blonde in Act 4) refers to an analogous scene from G. Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor.

The value of Thomas’s operas is the orchestration, in which the composer showed a typically French sensitivity to sound colour. The preference for the sound of the flute and harp can be seen as a prelude to Impressionism. An unusual idea is the violin solos in the style of Paganini, performed on stage in Le carnaval de Venise. Thomas was also one of the first composers, alongside Berlioz, to include saxophones and saxhorns in the orchestra, including the bass versions of these instruments; the use of chromatic trumpets and A. Sax’s six-valve trombone constructions is also of historical significance.

In addition to traditional operatic singing, Thomas developed melodic recitation in his works, similar to Sprechgesang, later developed in the field of lyric opera by his successors – J. Massenet and C. Debussy. Thomas went down in the history of French opera as an uncompromising successor of the native tradition and an outspoken opponent of Wagner’s concept of musical drama.

Literature: G. Andrieux Catalogue de manuscrits musicaux d’Ambroise Thomas, Paris 1935; H. Delaborde Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de M. A. Thomas, Paris 1896, reprint 2013; M. Cooper Charles Loius Ambroise Thomas, «The Music Masters» II, ed. A.L. Bacharach, London 1950, published separately London 1958; W. Dean Shakespeare and Opera, in: Shakespeare in Music, ed. P. Hartnoil, London 1964; G. Schmidgall Shakespeare and Opera, New York 1990; The Original Staging Manuals for Twelve Parisian Operatic Premières, ed. H.R. Cohen, Stuyvesant (New York) 1991; R. Graeme ,,Hamletˮ. Ambroise Thomas “Opera Quarterlyˮ XI/3, 1993; E. Rogeboz-Malfroy Amrboise Thomas ou la tentation du lyrique, Paris 1994; E. Rogeboz-Malfroy Support littéraire et création musicale dans l’œuvre lyrique d’Ambroise Thomas, in: Le Théâtre lyrique en France au XIXe siècle, ed. M. Prévost, Metz 1995; G. Masson Ambroise Thomas, un compositeur lyrique au XIXe siècle, Metz 1996; E. Rogeboz-Malfroy Ambroise Thomas. Témoin du siècle 1811–1896, Besançon 1999; J. K. Law Three Hamlets. Ambroise Thomas, “The Opera Quarterlyˮ XIX/3, 2003; U. Weisstein, W. Bernhart Unwillkürliche Parodie und unfreiwillige Komik in Ambroise Thomas ,,Mignonˮ, in: Selected essays on opera, Amsterdam 2006; S. Suddhaseel Shakespeare reception in France: the case of Ambroise Thomas ,,Hamletˮ, in: Shakespeare and the Culture of Romanticism, ed. J. M. Ortiz, Farnham 2013; R. B. Bunt Finding the Shakespeare in Ambroise Thomas’s ,,Hamletˮ: A Comparison of Plot and Character in the Seventeenth-Century English Play and the Nineteenth-Century French Opera, doctoral dissertation at the University of Nevada, Ann Arbor 2017; M. Croteau ‘Le Songe d’une nuit d’été’ of Ambroise Thomas: L’éclat at the end of the tunnel, “Cahiers Élisabéthainsˮ 99, 2019; Ambroise Thomas: lettres à Jacques-Léopold et Henri Heugel (1867–1896), ed. J.-L. Heugel, H. Heugel, J.-Ch. Branger, Metz 2021; Shakespeare et la musique en France (XIXe-XXIe siècle), ed. C. Bardelmann, Nancy 2021; Th. Gautier, P. Pascal, A. Pougin, J. Tiersot Ambroise Thomas, Paris 2023.