Camille Saint-Saëns: Nuit Persane & Hélène – Galakonzert

Marking France’s Tenure as EU Chair

The exceptionally prolific and universally erudite French composer, pianist, organist, man of letters and organizer, Camille Saint-Saëns, concentrated in his compositional output most notably on instrumental genres, a field on which he admittedly felt most at ease. Notwithstanding this unambiguous penchant for instrumental music, he did leave behind a fairly extensive body of dramatic works, of which only the first of his fourteen operas, Samson et Dalila, survived on the repertoire to this day. He commissioned the last three of his operas to be staged at the Monte Carlo opera; they were: Hélène (February 18, 1904), L’Ancêtre (February 24, 1906), and Déjanire (March 14, 1911).

The one-acter, Hélène, which Saint-Saëns denoted “poème lyrique,” and to which he furnished his own libretto, dealt with the story of Helen of Troy. Saint-Saëns was one of the many detractors of Offenbach’s operetta, La belle Hélène, who disliked its trivial treatment of antiquity. Saint-Saëns wished to portray the relation between Helen and Paris with due seriousness, as a paean to the passion of love. The opera has four soloists: two sopranos (Hélène and Vénus), contralto (Pallas Athena), and tenor (Paris). The goddess Venus strives to convince Helen to leave Menelaus and choose Paris in his stead, while Pallas Athena warns her that if she flees from Sparta to Troy, a terrible catastrophe will ensue. As we know, Helen decided to heed the advice of the goddess of love, Venus...

Saint-Saëns wrote the title part for the legendary Australian soprano Nellie Melba (1861–1931), then a major star of the Monte Carlo opera house. She sang Hélène during the opera’s world premiere, on February 18, 1904 (in a double bill with Massenet’s one-acter, La Navarraise), under the baton of Saint-Saëns. The same year he conducted also the productions at Covent Garden in London in May, in Milano in November and subsequently, on January 18, 1905, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. Then opera had fallen into oblivion.

Until quite recently the Executive Director of Melbourne’s Melba Foundation, Ms Maria Vandamme, found in the archives of the Monte Carlo Opera, where she was searching for documentary material on Dame Nellie Melba, the score of Saint-Saëns’Hélène. This October the opera was recorded for the Melbourne label Melba Recordings under the baton of the French conductor Guillaume Tourniaire.

Just a few brief notes about the other title of the night’s double bill. Saint-Saëns wrote over 120 songs, mostly grouped in cycles, such as the series of Mélodies Persanes, Op. 26 composed between 1870 and 1871 to the text of Armand Renaud (1836–1895). Its exotic melodies were warmly received, and in 1891 the composer revised work in a version for two soloists, reciter, choir and orchestra; he changed the original order of the melodies, added new ones and the cycle renamed Nuit Persane. While the original version, Mélodies Persanes, has survived, even receiving a CD presentation featuring the French baritone François le Roux and pianist Graham Johnson (Hyperion, 2005), the vocal-instrumental score of Nuit Persane followed the tracks of Hélène into oblivion.

The Prague State Opera seized this fact as a prime opportunity to manifest, in the very year of marking 120 years of its home building, the company’s link with the pathfinding and progressive ideals of the one-time New German Theatre. The PSO’s current principal conductor, Guillaume Tourniaire, should be credited for the mounting of the renewed modern-time premiere of Saint-Saëns’ Hélène at the Prague State Opera, as naturally enough interest in reintroducing the opera into the repertoire was fairly widespread, involving companies not only in Australia, but also and most particularly in France.

These concerts are privileged by the patronage of H. E. Charles Fries, Ambassador of the French Republic to the Czech Republic.

Programme

Nuit Persane

Cycle of songs to the text of Armand Renaud for mezzo-soprano, tenor, speaker, choir and orchestra

Hélène

Opera in one act for soli, choir and orchestra

• Concert performance
• Modern-day premieres
• Prague State Opera soloists, choir and orchestra