“The Opéra-Comique has been reduced to a pile of rubble!” opened a horrifying editorial on May 28, 1887, in Le Monde artiste,describing the first of two conflagrations darkening the Parisian fin de siècle.The Bazar de la Charité was the scene of the second fiery disaster, occurring a mere ten years later.

Just thirteen days before the Opéra-Comique burned to the ground, François-Frédéric Steenackers, a legislator in the Chambre des députés, had questioned the building's security procedures. The Ministre des Beaux-Arts, Marcellin Berthelot, had admitted that a fire during a performance would be a catastrophe.

On May 25, their fears became a reality. A performance of Le Chalethad just finished, and the first act of Ambroise Thomas's Mignonwas beginning, when the gas lights above the set caught on fire, sending a cascade of sparks onto the stage. Most of the audience didn't notice when several singers quickly began to stomp on the burning particles. Soon it became obvious, however, that the situation was uncontrollable, and the audience was advised to evacuate the theater. Everyone began to file out rapidly, but calmly, when the man in charge of the gas lights decided to turn them off, fearing an explosion. In the darkened auditorium, the audience panicked when flames shot from the stage, for the technicians had forgotten to lower the fire curtain.

That evening approximately two thousand people had been present in the theater, including the audience, performers, and staff. The official report listed eighty-four deaths, but this does not include those who died later from their injuries, nor those whose families did not inform the theater's administration.

There was an enormous outcry. After Léon Carvalho, the Opéra-Comique's director, submitted his resignation to the Ministre des Beaux-Arts, Jules Barbier was appointed provisional administrator. Seven people, including Carvalho, were convicted of negligence, then finally acquitted after an appeal.

By October 1, all traces of the former Salle Favart had disappeared. Parisian officials agreed to provide temporary performing quarters in the former Théâtre-Lyrique, located at the Place du Châtelet. This temporary Opéra-Comique opened on October 15. By January 1, 1888, Louis Paravey, formerly a singer before becoming the director of the Opéra de Nantes, had taken over its administration.

The year 2012 marked the centenary of the death of French opera composer Jules Massenet (1842–1912) who, alongside Richard Wagner and Giuseppe Verdi, was one of the most prolific and successful composers of the nineteenth century. His career extended into the twentieth century, and when he died on August 13, 1912, he left three finished operas which would receive their premieres posthumously. Massenet and his lifelong colleague Camille Saint-Saëns were the most performed French composers of their epoch. In both quality and quantity, however, Massenet is the only French operatic composer comparable to a Giacomo Puccini or a Richard Strauss. Massenet composed twenty-seven operas, four oratorios, six cantatas, over two hundred concert songs, and instrumental works including ballets, incidental music, and orchestral suites. He was awarded every possible honor in his field, including the Prix de Rome (1863), the Légion d'Honneur (attaining the highest rank of Grand Officier in 1901), and membership in the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut (1878). From 1878 to 1896, he taught composition at the Paris Conservatoire and, after retiring from that position, continued to mentor a veritable lexicon of the following generation's young composers. In the century following his death, Massenet's operas Manonand Werther,among others, have continued to be regularly performed world-wide. Between his death and its recent centennial in 2012, there has been a continual stream of interest in both his music and in the rich details of his long life.

Massenet has been the subject of numerous biographical monographs in both French and in English. Many biographers include detailed information about his operatic works, including synopses of their plots, production history, and occasionally details of their harmonic analysis. The first biographical monographs appeared before Massenet's death. In France, Eugène de Solenière's Massenet: étude critique et documentaire(1897) and Louis Schneider's, Massenet(Paris: Carteret, 1907) were followed by the first biography in English, Henry T. Finck's Massenet and His Operas(New York: John Lane, 1910). The composer's supposed autobiography, Mes souvenirs, was published in France in 1913. By the end of the 20th century, at least nine more Massenet biographies had been written in French, and two more in English.