Ambroise Thomas was born at Metz, France, on August 5, 1811, and is therefore by seven years the senior of Charles Gounod.  His aptitudes for music were so strong that he learned the notes as quickly as he acquired the letters of the alphabet.  At the age of four he was instructed in his solfeggi by his father, who was a professor of music, and three years later he began to take lessons on the violin and piano.  When he was seventeen he was thoroughly proficient in all the preparatory studies demanded for admission to the Paris Conservatoire, and he easily obtained admission into that great institution.  He first studied under Zimmermann and Kalkbrenner, and afterward under Dourlen, Barbereau, Le Sueur, and Reicha.  For successive years he carried off first prizes:  for the piano in 1829; for harmony, in 1830; and in 1832 the highest honor in composition was awarded him, the Prix de Rome, which allowed him to go to Italy as a government stipendiary.

Our young laureate passed three years in Italy, spending most of his time at Rome and Naples.  The special result of his Italian studies was a requiem mass, which was performed with great approbation from its musical judges at Paris and Rome.  After traveling in Germany, Thomas returned to Paris in 1836, thoroughly equipped for his career as composer, for he had been an indefatigable student, and neglected no opportunity of perfecting his knowledge.  The first step in the brilliant career of Thomas was the production of a comic opera in one act, “La Double Echelle,” produced in 1837.  This met with a good reception, and it was promptly followed by the production of several other light scores, that further enhanced his reputation for talent.  He was not generally recognized by musicians as a man of marked promise till he produced “Mina,” a comic opera in three acts, which was represented in 1843.  The beauty of the instrumentation and the melodious richness of the work were unmistakable, and henceforth every production of the young composer was watched with great interest.

Ambroise Thomas could not be said to have reached a great popular success until he produced “Le Caid,” a work of the opera-boitffe type, which instantly became an immense public favorite.  This was first represented in 1849, and it has always held its place on the French stage as one of the most delightful works of its class, in spite of the competition of such later outgrowths of the opera-bouffe, school as Offenbach, Lecocq, and others.  The score of this work proved to be immensely amusing and brightly melodious, and it was such a pecuniary success that the more judicious friends of Thomas feared that he might be seduced into cultivating a field far below the powers of his poetic imagination and thorough musical science.  Strong heads might easily be turned by such lavish applause, and it would not have been wonderful had Thomas, dazzled by the reception of “Le Caid,” remained for a long time a wanderer from the path which lay open to his great talents.  The composer’s ambition, however, proved to be too high to content itself with ephemeral success, or cultivating the more frivolous forms of his art, however profitable aid pleasant these might be.