The genesis of Le Timbre d’argent

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28/08/2020

Within Camille Saint-Saëns’s operatic output, Le Timbre d’argent occupies a special place and deserves special attention. It is a thoroughly neglected work today, but there are many reasons to plead its cause and to rejoice at its resurrection. Already during the composer’s lifetime, ill fate pursued the opera relentlessly, for its complicated genesis and a path strewn with obstacles perturbed its creation and reception. These multiple vicissitudes exemplified both the problems encountered by young composers when they attempted timid innovations and the difficulty the new generation of composers active at the pivotal era between the Second Empire and the Third Republic faced in gaining access to the operatic stage.

CD-Book Camille Saint-Saëns. Le Timbre d’argent (2020). Translation: Charles Johnston.