Messager, André Charles Prosper (1853–1929)

French composer and conductor. As well as composing light operas, such as La Béarnaise (1885) and Véronique (1898), he was noted as a conductor of Mozart and Wagner, and also as a pianist.

He studied at Niedermeyer's school in Paris, under Fauré and Saint-Saëns. In 1876 he won prizes for a symphony and a cantata and in 1883 produced a completion of an operetta François les Bas-bleus left unfinished by Firmin Bernicat. He became conductor of the Opéra-Comique and in 1898 its general director. He was artistic director at Covent Garden, London 1901–06 and joint director of the Paris Opéra 1901–13. His wife was the Irish composer Hope Temple (Dotie Davies, 1859–1938), who had been a pupil of his. In 1902 he conducted the first performance of Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande.

Works Operas and operettas La fauvette du Temple (1885), La Béarnaise, Le bourgeois de Calais (1887), Isoline (1888), Le mari de la reine (1889), La Basoche (1890), Madame Chrysanthème (after Pierre Loti's novel, 1893), Miss Dollar, Mirette, Le chevalier d'Harmental (1896), Les p'tites Michu (1897), Véronique (1898), Les dragons de l'impératrice (1905), Fortunio, Béatrice (1914), Monsieur Beaucaire, (in English, 1919), La petite fonctionnaire (1921), L'amour masqué, Passionnement (1926), Coup de roulis.

Other ballets Les deux pigeons (1886), Scaramouche (1891), Le chevalier aux fleurs (1897), Une aventure de la Guimard (1900) and others; instrumental pieces; piano duets; songs.