Text Box:  29. Now we see a French composer who has one main famous piece, but a great one. His name is Jules Massenet (Mass a nay’). He was born in 1842 and died in 1912 at age 70. This composer was a man of great discipline, who would rise everyday at 4 a.m. and compose until noon. He is unranked by Goulding. The piece you heard on the CD comes from the his opera entitled Thais (Tie eeze), which was first produced in Paris in 1894. It’s setting is the Egyptian desert in the fourth century.