Camille Saint-Saëns. Le Timbre d'argent

CD-Book. Bru Zane Label. French Opera Collection n. 25.

Composed in 1864, Le Timbre d’argent had to wait until 1877 to be premiered – in a version with spoken dialogue – at the Théâtre National Lyrique. The theatre’s abrupt closure prevented subsequent revival, and the composer proceeded, at the behest of theatre directors who promised to stage it, to modify the physiognomy of a score he regarded as one of his finest. Le Timbre d’argent was subsequently heard, notably, in Monte Carlo (1905) and at La Monnaie (1914), in a wholly sung version restoring cut tableaux. It is this last version that is recorded here. The work was composed amid the great Wagnerian debate, following innovative precepts. Foreshadowing the phantasmagoria of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann, the story takes place almost entirely within the confines of . . . a nightmare. And the final scene is no less than a cinematic flashback long before such a thing existed. An amused Saint-Saëns wrote: ‘The piece was seen as a revolutionary and prodigiously advanced work’ (March 1914).

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