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SAMSON AND DELILAH

Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire , music by Camille Saint-Saens

Opera de Marseille, 23 November

Concert version

The work

In France labels we like: there was much discussion of this "biblical opera" to know if we should fall into the category oratorio or opera, which disturbed long, so long as the poor Saint-Saëns began nearly ten years (1868-1877) to finish both his attempts to make parties in France were failures. It will not be less than the support of two strong musical personalities, the great singer Pauline Viardot García , dedicatee of the work that pushes the composer to persevere, and Liszt , which helps triumph in Weimer in 1877. The ungrateful France will not host in 1890, and "good bill of Paris', which is a picky eater, only in 1892.

One quibble as both neo-classicism with reference to Gluck, and on the "Wagnerian" contradictory, Saint-Saens and the latter suspicion is already more accused, convicted, in a France which has just received a beating in his first historic Franco-German in preparation for others. But this music has run away (chorus), guns (Duet Delilah High Priest), uses leitmoitve , "reasonable drivers" that characterize the characters and their emotions, shows exactly that technical knowledge of the great composer, both historical and contemporary music in a well to him: a masterpiece.

The first act is probably the oratorio by a droop almost forced mass choirs, but not required with an excellent director. You have to admire his balance and overall geometry: opening chorus of lament of the Hebrew subject, concluding chorus of thanksgiving, through a tumultuous episode warrior, Samson's victory over the Philistines, and presentiment of defeat in love the winner with the arrival soothing girls dancing, and that, disturbingly, Dalila, and the hero torn between the exhortations of misogynistic old Hebrew legitimate and temptations of the flesh.

The last act as skillfully uses choral masses, but without repetition, in an intervention which is like a voice of conscience. On the second, with a monologue of Delilah and her two antagonistic duets, one with the high priest, the other with Samson, it is a dramatic beauty as great as the tavern scene between Carmen and Don Jose: Hebrew hero is stripped by the seductive woman of strength as the English soldier was snatched from his military life by Gypsy, with a fatal outcome for both.

interpretation

It is therefore regrettable staging, but the concert version, all the music, the view from the head to standing singers, instruments, abandoned all sense of the beauty of this score by turns grandiose and intimate, and so voluptuous: music does not put in the voice of a woman such a load of sensuality, loaded with nostalgia and hurt the first act, assumed and claimed, heady, captious, the second. Revenge of the woman as a cruel Merteuil Bible to the last. Saint-Saens, like his hero Samson was bound to love this woman and if she betrays the price is superb, which makes defeat a God, and in our hearts and ears.

From the first chords, like a curtain that opens on the ground haunting fugue, which will rise on the Hebrew prayer, sweet and torn, one is struck by the wave continues to this music without numbers that divide the speech into slices, which are linked with the air speed and natural in a sort of orchestral fade. The Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra de Marseille on the same plane as the singers, are ignited by the direction of Emmanuel Vuillaume any finesse and geometry: the clean lines architecture are polished without rigidity, but the instrumental colors are not lost in the mass and gleaming, charming and attractive hearing in which the eye perceives the source from the player. The chief whip and caress the crescendi are cleverly arranged without falling into confusion and bacchanal of the last act takes the challenge of a disorder without chaos orgiastic cacophony but full of sensual madness.

The choirs are exemplarily prepared by Peter Iodice , their full involvement in music and in right frontal give them a beautiful cohesion.

Too short sentences of two Philistine and the messenger ( Jean-Jacques Doumène , Guy Gabelle and Wilfrid Tissot ) Do not have time to try and we regret the role too short Nicolas Tested in Abimelech, superb bass-baritone voice, bright, expressive, perfect diction. Wojtek Smilek by the dark color and width of his bass voice, gives depth, shivering misogynist Father Modesty, in Old Hebrew, under the convention that prepared the old men a deep voice while the man's voice rises like that of women falls with age. Of exceptional vigor and vitality, Philippe Rouillon , is a magnificent Grand Imprecatory priest, sharp and biting angry, full of dark serious declines in voice and soul into the diabolical duo of Da lila II. Sigmund remarkable an admirable Valkyrie in 2007, Torsten Kerl , Samson, was the victim of a chill. However, never heldentenor have better deserved the title of "heroic tenor" him as he gives the song without cheating as Dalila, n'escamotant no difficulty, even braving the Philistines as a steel sharp as a sword, just dull by disease, cold, barely perceptible in the heat of some piani scene of his wheel, full of sensitivity.

become since its theatrical debut as the holder of the role of Delilah, Olga Borodina , deploys, if its sails seductive, soaring voice of a beautiful fabric of sensual serious treble Seventh Heaven voluptuous, fleshy, powerful and delicate, also to aid in force only in the passages of agility and pianissimos that abound. Hardly can we regret more strength than tenderness in the end its air inlet. If the game is limited by the looks, we appreciate them as much as the voice and words exchanged with the high priest, mutual cruelties common to pique their venom against Samson in a temporary hell. We can not imagine Samson able to escape the toils of his enchanting and voluptuous "Answer my love ...". A few small slips around, admiring his French diction, but these r not rolled at the end of words to ensure the projection.

But we regret that we correct the exact phrase booklet air "Love, just help my weakness, "" The hour of vengeance that must meet at our gods, "the true meaning of 'do what you must report to someone or something to satisfy homework, to honor ', which means that Delilah admits religious duty by acting in addition to personal revenge, transformed in the platitude of "who must meet our gods, "as if the gods cared smallest point that a revenge duties they are owed.

Opera de Marseille, 17, 20, 23, 26 November 2010.

Samson and Delilah Camille Saint-Saens .

Orchestre de l'Opera de Marseille; Chorus Opera de Marseille (Peter Iodice), Music Director Emmanuel Villaume.

Distribution:

Olga Borodina: Dalila, Torsten Kerl, Samson, Philippe Rouillon: The High Priest of Dagon; Wojtek Smilek: An Old Hebrew Nicolas Tested: Abimelech; Wilfrid Tissot: The Philistine Messenger, Guy Gabelle: First Philisitin: Jean-Jacques Doumène; Second Philistine.

Photos: Christian Dresse .
1. Borodina, followed by Rouillon and Villaume;
2. Villaume, Borodina, Kerl and Smilek;
3. Villaume, Borodina, Kerl.