OCL, Samson and Delilah,

1. French opera in 3 acts, Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire.

2. Premiere at the Hoftheater in Weimar, Germany, December, 1877.
3. Acts 1 and 3 of Samson and Delilah are predominantly choral, a magnificent contrast to the vivid,
consuming passions of Act 2.
4. The conflict in the opera and the underlying biblical story essentially highlights the entire enigma
of man: the spirit versus the flesh, emotion versus reason, the sacred versus the profane, and even
love versus patriotism and duty. It is a story of consuming passions that presents one of the most
exciting seduction scenes in all opera, the betrayal of a hero, and in the end, a mass murder on the
grandest of scales as an entire temple is brought down on the infidels.
5. Saint-Saëns was an awesome child prodigy. At the age of two and a half he demonstrated perfect
pitch and was picking out tunes at the piano. He could read and write before he was three, and
composed his first piece. At five, he analyzed Mozart’s Don Giovanni, using not the piano reduction
but the full score, and at the same age, was giving public performances at the piano.
6. Franz Liszt described Saint-Saëns as the finest organist in the world.
7. At the beginning of his composing career, he was considered one of France’s musical
revolutionaries, allying himself with composers who were considered progressives, such as Wagner,
Liszt, and Schumann. Nevertheless, as he grew older, he had a sea change and became an
archconservative, making enemies within the French musical establishment. He hated and despised
the music of Franck, Debussy, and d’Indy, and feuded profusely with Massenet.
8. As a composer, Saint-Saëns was known as the perfect technician whose versatility enabled him
to write prolifically in all forms. A common charge against his music was that it was all technique
and no ideas, empty in form, and elegant but superficial. His music achieved few successes in its
time, prompting Berlioz’s quip that “he knows everything but he lacks experience.”
9. Saint-Saëns was a Neoclassicist whose traditions were rooted in the clarity and order of the
Classic tradition. His music is chaste and avoids supersensuality, banality and bad taste.
10. All of piano concertos by Saint-Saëns were first performed by himself.
12. Although Saint-Saëns wrote 14 operas, his most famous operatic work remains Samson et Dalila.
13. Charles Gounod, had changed the character of French opera, transforming it from its ornate
Meyerbeerian grand opera traditions toward the French lyrique, a broad and arching lyricism in
which the focus was toward restrained and more sensitive music filled with human values and
melodic sentimentality. The essence of the school became not epic but lyric, not thematic but
melodic, not heroic but purely and passionately personal.
14. Carmen’s alluring title character gave the French lyric theater a new thrust of realism with its
melodramatic portrayal of savage passions and raw violence.
15. Debussy’s style earned him the title of “Father of Musical Impressionism,” a term adapted from
the painting style of the French Impressionists.
16. Impressionistic music evoked sensations or impressions of a subject or idea, and was more
concerned with subtle nuances and effects rather than with substance and structure.
17. Samson and Delilah is grand opera, a nine-year effort by Saint-Saëns that remains very close in
its grand style to those earlier spectacle operas by Meyerbeer and Halévy. Their goal was to be
opulent and sumptuous, and feature large casts, ballets, and scenery.
18. The uniqueness of Samson and Delilah derives from its magnificent blend of choral or oratorio-
style exposition in Acts 1 and 3 that seems to frame its melodramatic second act.
19. For the second act, Saint-Saëns provided French music to the core, inventing extravagantly
luscious and seductive music to underscore the dramatic interplay between the enchantress Delilah
and the soul-searching Samson.
20. Wagner had become rather unpopular in France.
21. In late nineteenth-century France, the political and artistic climate was so tense that any
inference to “Germanism” or any association with “Wagnerism” was considered treachery and
blasphemy. From the point of view of French nationalistic ardor, art had become politicized.
22. Samson and Delilah fell into the political quagmire and was considered distinctly Wagnerian, an
attribution owing to Saint-Saëns’ frequent use of chromatic modulations, large orchestration, and in
particular the use of leitmotifs.
23. In Samson and Delilah, Saint-Saëns experienced that same anti-Wagnerian furor that had earlier
condemned Bizet and Carmen.
24. Saint-Saëns’use of leitmotifs was far from Wagnerian. He did not alter them or weave them
symphonically, but rather, brilliantly used them as thematic blocks which he interjected
appropriately to provide dramatic emphasis and recollection.
25. In France Samson and Delilah was initially considered too radical by the French public, and
Saint-Saëns found himself grouped with the “Wagnerian radicals”: Liszt, Berlioz, and of course
Richard Wagner himself.
26. At the time of Samson and Delilah, Saint-Saëns revered Wagner enormously on musical
grounds.
27. Franz Liszt, the ruling spirit of Weimar composers, successfully produced and conducted the
world premiere of Samson and Delilah at Weimar in 1877; however, it was sung in German.
28. Acts 1 and 3 are almost predominantly choral, and they provide a magnificent contrast to the
vivid, consuming passions portrayed in Act 2. It is indeed the second act of Samson and Delilah that
is quintessential opera, and far from oratorio in concept or format.
29. Many consider Samson and Delilah more oratorio than opera.
30. The Samson and Delilah story is derived exclusively from the Old Testament.
31. Ferdinand Lemaire based the opera’s libretto on the Biblical story that appears in the Old
Testament Book of Judges.
32. In the opera story, Delilah has two motivations to destroy Samson: she is a Philistine patriot,
whose enemies are the Israelites and Samson, and she is a spurned woman seeking vengeance
against Samson because he abandoned her for another woman.
33. Samson and Delilah is an archetypal Biblical story in which the hero loses his faith and then it
returns.
34. Samson and Delilah, with its core story about faith, portrays the glorious victory of the powers
of good over the powers of darkness.
35. Time of the opera story: about 1150 B.C.
36. Place of the opera story: the cin of Gaza in ancient Palestine.
37. Delilah agrees to help her fellow Philistines overcome Samson by learning the secret of his
strength. When Samson arrives at her tent, Delilah seduces him with her charms and plies him with
wine, and in his weakness Samson reveals that his strength is his hair. While Samson sleeps, Delilah
cuts his hair, and then calls the Philistines. Samson is captured, blinded, and rendered harmless.
38. Delilah’s sensuous appeal to Samson is intoxicating.
39. Love is the weapon Delilah uses to conquer Samson.
40. Samson battles the conflict between the spirit and the flesh, the tension between his loyalty to
Israel and his faith in God, and his uncontrollable passion for Delilah.
41. Delilah challenges Samson to prove his love for her. If he truly loves her, he must share the
secret of his miraculous strength with her.
42. Samson realizes that Delilah has betrayed him, and he has betrayed his God.
43. Samson prays to the God of Israel for a miracle, Samson’s prayers are answered. He feels his
strength returning. As the chant of the Philistines reaches a frenzied climax, with one mighty effort
Samson pulls the temple pillars down. Dagon’s temple crumbles, burying Samson together with
Israel’s Philistine enemies.
44. Samson’s God has triumphed over the pagan Philistines.