Thanks to all the Canteen heroes....and ALL our heroes!
Thanks to you, Kathy for honoring them!
As I build up to the chamber masterpiece by Saint-Saens that forms the cornerstone of Friday’s night’s performance, I’d like to give Canteen members a view of that composer and his works.
How would you like to have a name like Camille Saint-Saens (pronounced “SAN-Saaaan”)? “Some girl’d giggle and I’d get red, and some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head, life sure weren’t easy for a guy named – Camille?”
He was born in 1835 and died in 1921. He started out a young firebrand in music and ended up a member of the French establishment futilely defending French music against modern “barbarians” like Debussy and Stravinsky. He lived long enough to write soundtracks for silent movies, and in his final days he wrote sonatas for wind instruments and piano that remain the best in their forms.
He was a child prodigy, a great pianist, and he got a buildup that he was never able to live up to. In 1871, with France humiliated in its dustup with Otto von Bismarck and Prussia, and feeling inferior to everything German from its military prowess to its culture, Camille was touted as the French Beethoven. This did a grave disservice to Beethoven. Saint-Saens was in fact the French Mendelssohn, which was a very different animal. Like Mendelssohn he was a lightweight capable of climbing on his tiptoes, reaching for the stars and grabbing a few of them.
Of his dozen operas, only one survives, “Samson and Delilah” from 1895, and it’s a masterpiece. Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a fragment of a fake Saint-Saens opera titled “Hannibal” for “The Phantom of the Opera”, which is not easy to do, but he managed to capture the banality of a really bad Saint-Saens opera. In “Samson”, Camille came to terms with Wagner brilliantly, and he created one of opera’s greatest love duets. This is the 1998 Met performance which is one of my desert island DVD’s. Have a box of tissues handy for this.
Saint-Saens: “My Heart is a Voice” from “Samson and Delilah”
The ballet from “Samson”, which is an orgy scene, has infiltrated its way into American pop culture thanks to Warner Brothers cartoons of the Forties. This is the Met’s 1983 centennial production, and it’s much racier than would have been permitted on the Paris stage in 1895. Mom and the kiddies beware! At 3:35 there is a magic moment where the winds take the pulse, and the strings float a beautiful melody in C Major above them.
Saint-Saens: “”Bacchanale” from “Samson and Delilah”
In the final scene of “Samson”, the Philistines pray to their god Dagon, and Camille writes it up as a parody of a Bach chorale and fugue, which constitutes both religious and musical blasphemy. (This is from the 1998 Met production.) “Samson” is the only opera in the repertory that ends in screams. You’ll see why at the end.
Good evening, Luv....how’s the weather? Is your grass green?
God Bless and watch over ALL our heroes!