André Messager

André Charles Prosper Messager (1853–1929) was a French composer, conductor and musical director whose career spanned opera, operetta and ballet. Born in Montluçon, he studied at the École Niedermeyer in Paris and was closely associated with Gabriel Fauré. He had a distinguished conducting career, directing the première of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) at the Opéra-Comique and serving as musical director at Covent Garden and the Paris Opéra.

His ballet score Les Deux Pigeons (The Two Pigeons, 1886) was composed for the Paris Opéra and is a delightful example of late Romantic ballet music: warm, melodious, gently comic in its village scenes and tenderly lyrical in its love duet. Frederick Ashton choreographed his celebrated production for the Royal Ballet in 1961, describing it as one of his most personal works, a tender celebration of young love and its vulnerabilities. Ashton's version has remained a beloved item in the Royal Ballet's repertoire, particularly prized for the intimacy and charm that Ashton drew from Messager's score.

Messager was also a successful composer of operettas, of which Véronique (1898) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) are the best remembered.