Le Cid

Manon had barely won over audiences at the Salle Favart, when Massenet started looking for a new subject to set to music. Anticipating his needs, his publisher Hartmann offered him the manuscript of a libretto left with him a long time previously by Louis Gallet. Having the complete libretto at his disposal, Massenet learned the poem by heart in order to work on it anytime and anywhere. Although this classical tragedy, written in alexandrines and faithful to the rule of three unities, did not seem an overly suitable subject for a grand opera, Massenet was deeply inspired by the storyline centred around Chimène’s inner drama. The composer even inserted a scene in Act II taken from an old libretto by Ennery, in which Chimène discovers that her lover is her father’s murderer. Composed during the summer of 1884 and orchestrated while he was already working on Werther, the score contains some shimmering musical writing, whether it is epic and terse in style or developed tenderly. The ballet–written in Marseille where Hérodiade was being performed–uses a motif taken by Massenet from a posada in Barcelona. “It was a fragment of local colour that I seized. I couldn’t let it get away.” (Mes souvenirs.) Featured in the programme the following year during the bicentenary celebrations for the death of Corneille, Le Cid was the first premiere to be put on by Eugène Ritt and Pedro Gailhard, the new directors at the Paris Opéra. The latter took care of the staging under the watchful eye of Massenet, who conducted the overture on the evening of the premiere, before handing the baton to Jules Garcin. After heading back to the Opéra-Comique to hear Manon, the composer returned to the Paris Opéra in time to witness the work’s resounding success, which continued for 84 performances.