Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Saint-Saëns: Ascanio

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Camille Saint-Saëns composed thirteen operas over the course of his career, but only Samson et Délilah (1877) continued to hold the stage after his death in 1921. Ascanio was written in 1888 along the traditional lines of nineteenth century French grand opera à la Meyerbeer. The opera is in the expected five acts or seven tableaux (scenes), with the requisite ballet sequence. When it was first produced at the Paris Opera in 1890 the theater's management decided it was entirely too long, so they made extensive cuts to the score without Saint-Saëns' knowledge or consent. He saw and heard his work only in its mutilated form during his lifetime.

Ascanio is based on the novel of the same name by Alexandre Dumas Senior, published in 1843. The story is really about the famed Italian renaissance artisan Benvenuto Cellini. Saint-Saëns stuck with the title Ascanio so as not to confuse the public with Berlioz' 1837 opera about Cellini. Ascanio is a handsome young apprentice on Cellini's staff. In 1539 Cellini and crew came to Paris to cast a monumental statue for the French king Francis the First. Master and apprentice both get caught up in amorous intrigues in the French royal court. Cellini's love interest in the court comes to a tragic end.

Saint-Saëns' complete 1888 manuscript score was employed in a concert performance of Ascanio given in the Grand Théatre in Geneva, Switzerland in 2017. It was recorded live there for B Records, who released this the presumed world premiere recording of Ascanio in a deluxe book-style package containing three CDs. Guillaume Tournaire conducted the orchestra and chorus of the Haute Ecole or High School of Music of Geneva, augmented by the Chorus of Geneva's Grand Théatre, with a big singing cast. The full length Ascanio fits very tightly into the three-and-a-half hour lyric theater timeslot.