Le Timbre d’argent and its transformations

In 1880 Saint-Saëns was asked to make some revisions in Le Timbre d’argent which had then been staged once in Paris and once in Brussels. There was a possibility of a third staging in St Petersburg. "Do you realise that this would be the sixth version of this opera?" he replied. "It’s not an opera any more, it’s a nightmare." In fact the St Petersburg performances did not take place, but it was far from the end of the story since he worked on it in 1894, again in 1903, and again in 1913. Of all Saint-Saëns’s operas Le Timbre d’argent underwent more revision and alteration than any of the others, which is a good reason why it should be revived and studied today. Another good reason is that its libretto is an exceptionally lively example of the work of Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, the leading pair of librettists of their day, who supplied texts for Halévy, Meyerbeer, Bizet, Reyer, Gounod (Faust, Mireille, Roméo et Juliette, and others),Thomas(Mignon and Hamlet), in other words all the major French composers of their time.