We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Monday October 24 2016 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Damiano Michieletto. Sets: Paolo Fantin. Costumes: Carla Teti. Lighting: Alessandro Carletti. Dalila: Anita Rachvelishvili. Samson: Aleksandrs Antonenko. Le Grand Prêtre de Dagon: Egils Silins. Abimélech: Nicolas Testé. Un vieillard hébreu: Nicolas Cavallier. Un Messager philistin: John Bernard. Premier Philistin: Luca Sannai. Deuxième Philistin: Jian-Hong Zhao. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Just as I was happy to hear Verdi’s Requiem again last week, I was happy to hear Samson et Dalila again this Monday. Saint-Saëns is unfashionable and underrated, but I like him a lot, and wonder not just why I’ve never seen Samson staged before, but why we don’t get at least some of his other operas. Saint-Saëns Musically, it was a rare treat. After what I briefly thought was a rather ponderous, Brahmsian start, bringing to mind the Requiem (Brahms’s, not Verdi’s) and raising initial fear...

La Monnaie at Bozar, Brussels, Sunday March 25 2007 Conductor: Kazushi Ono. Chorus Master: Piers Maxim. Dalila: Olga Borodina. Samson: Carl Tanner. Le Grand Prêtre de Dagon: Jean-Philippe Lafont. Abimélech, satrape de Gaza: Federico Sacchi. Un vieil Hébreu: Chester Patton. Un messager: Tie Min Wang. Premier Philistin: André Grégoire. Deuxième philistin: Bernard Giovani. Orchestre symphonique et choeurs de la Monnaie. This concert performance of Samson et Dalila took place in the handsomely-restored art deco concert hall - complete with organ - of Horta's otherwise grim Palais des Beaux-Arts, or "Bozar" as it's now called, in Brussels. Though it seems fairly obvious to me that if composers intended their operas for the stage, staged they should be, Samson works quite well as oratorio: strong orchestral support, plenty of good stuff for the chorus, etc., apart from the odd detail explicit only on stage, e.g. the child who guides Samson to the pillars at the end. And w...