Saint-Saëns - Samson et Dalila
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. [Photo: Shafahi] This concert peformance 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 a