Dejanire

"It will be a strange score: people will either find it completely uninteresting or they will find it very beautiful," predicted Camille Saint-Saëns a few days before the première of Déjanire. The opera, which premiered on 14 March 1911 in Monte Carlo, is based on incidental music written in 1898 for the arena of Béziers. The composer was fascinated by this theme and soon wanted to give it a second, more ambitious life. The result was a mythological epic that, according to Gabriel Fauré, who was impressed by the effect of the choral work, inspired "powerful, suggestive music". The love drama, which tears at the heart of the heroine, leads to wild romantic duets and culminates in the public self-immolation of Hercules, who is set alight by the poisoned tunic he received from the fallen queen. This new Déjanire was greatly praised by critics, who flocked to Monaco to see it. However, the modernist path that French opera was following at that time meant that the work did not survive the upheaval of the First World War. It would have been a shame to delay this undeserved ostracism any longer.