by
Jules Massenet
Pièce
lyrique in
five acts.
Libretto
by Henri Cain and Arthur Bernède after the novel by Alphonse Daudet.
First
performed at the Opéra Comique, Paris, on November 27, 1897.
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Opera d’Oro has issued a recording of a 1973 London
performance with the BBC Orchestra & Chorus conducted by Bernard
Keefe. The cast is as follows:
Fanny Legrand (“Sapho”)—Milla Andrew
Jean Gaussin—Alexander Oliver
Césaire—George Macpherson
La Borderie—Bernard Dickerson
Caoudal—Nelson Taylor
Irène—Jenny Hill
Divonne—Laura Sarti
The performers are all, in
my opinion, more than adequate, and Milla Andrew has an interesting voice. The opera has its moments, but on the whole
is not terribly interesting. The sound
on the Opera d’Oro recording is acceptable to me, but it is certainly less than
perfect. There is sometimes some
background noise that may come from the original recording medium.
The recording is available
from amazon.com.
The opera is not about the famous Greek poetess of
Lesbos. Rather, it takes place in
France in the nineteenth century and is about a young man from the country who
goes to Paris and falls in love with a woman with a past, a woman who had posed
as model for a statue of Sapho. The
story is in some ways reminiscent of La Traviata and La Rondine.