Kassya

After the success in 1833 of Lakmé, Delibes turned to another form of exoticism: captivated by the music of Central Europe, he worked with his friends Philippe Gille and Henri Meilhac on a new project based on Frinko Balaban, a short story by the Galician writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

In 1846, in the village of Zevale in Galicia (on the borders of modern-day Poland and Ukraine), the young peasant Cyrille, who is loved by his distant cousin Sonia, falls in love with a gypsy girl, Kassya, who betrays him to marry the Count of Zevale. Cyrille is banished by his rival, but two years later he leads a peasants’ revolt and marches on the castle. He spares Kassya’s life and plans to marry Sonia, who has remained loyal to him. Kassya pleads with him to love her; in despair, she stabs herself. 

Delibes had carried out ethnomusicological investigation in the field during a trip to the Carpathian mountains in 1885, and studied the music of the region. Choruses, songs and dances of Galician inspiration are scattered throughout the opera. Delibes commenced work on Kassya in 1886. Its performance was announced by the Opéra-Comique for its 1887-88 season. However, a serious fire at the Salle Favart in May 1887, followed by a change of director,led to the opera being shelved. The composer died prematurely in 1891 and the work was not premièred until two years later (24 March 1893), by which time Wagner was all the rage, so that Kassya, with its classical style, with lyrical passages, choruses, and ensembles typical of opéra-comique, seemed completely out of date. Kassya was taken off after eight performances and was never revived. The ballet from Act IV has since been presented at the Opéra-Comique, and has often been broadcast on radio. Kassya was given in a concert version in Montpellier in 2018, but despite an excellent performance, the critics were not overimpressed.