Camille Saint-Saëns. L'Ancêtre

CD-Book. Bru Zane Label. French opera n. 44.

‘No!’ exclaims Nunciata, the stubborn Corsican grandmother, when she is begged to put an end to the vendetta between her family, the Fabiani, and their enemies, the Pietra Nera clan. Set against a backdrop of tragic deaths, voracious lust for vengeance and passionate love at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, this ‘lyric drama’ composed by Saint-Saëns in 1906 was premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and dedicated to Prince Albert I, who had commissioned it. Saint-Saëns demonstrates here the full range of his style, interweaving Debussyan chords, melodic lines à la Massenet and aggressive rhythms worthy of Prokofiev. Above all, he displays a feel for the theatre eminently characteristic of French opera, and one can only imagine how successful this score would be if it found its way back onto the stage. It was not without reason that after its triumphant premiere in Monte Carlo, L’Ancêtre was staged in several cities in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, as well as Algiers (February 1911) and Cairo (February 1912), before two further performances in March 1915 in the theatre where it had come into existence.

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