The Biblical Opera Beyond the Spectacle

As was announced about a month ago, this weekend’s offering in the Opera is ON service presented by San Francisco Opera (SFO) is Camille Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah. With the exception of “Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix” (my heart at thy sweet voice), the aria that Delilah sings in the second act to seduce Samson, this opera tends to be known more for its unabashed spectacle than for any other factor. Indeed, as I observed in previewing the production, it was the first to be presented through the Opera at the Ballpark series of simulcasts to the Mitsubishi Electronic Diamond Vision Board in Oracle Park for an audience of about 15,000 viewers; and the visuals alone would probably be sufficient to knock one out of the park.

However, as I observed in a preview article I wrote prior to seeing this production in September of 2007, there is more than ample evidence that Saint-Saëns himself prioritized the music over the spectacle. The composer deserves to be remembered for at least two technical skills, each of which carries far more weight than the “Bacchanale” theme which is definitely up there in the top five clichés in the classical music repertoire. Most important was his prodigious gift for writing highly inventive polyphonic music, a gift exercised in Samson and Delilah for both instrumental and vocal writing. In the latter category Saint-Saëns’ choral music is just as compelling for its homophony as it is for its polyphony. Another significant feature is the composer’s gift for chromatic lines that register just the right emotional impact without getting written off as too “slimy."

Douglas Schmidt’s design for the “Bacchanale” scene that concludes Samson and Delilah (photograph by Terrence McCarthy, courtesy of San Francisco Opera)

When it comes to the SFO production, everyone involved was on the ball in equal measure. Conductor Patrick Summers clearly appreciated all of the above virtues of Saint-Saëns’ techniques, and he knew how to make sure that they would register with any attentive listener. At the same time, Douglas Schmidt provided designs (such as the one reproduced above) on a grand scale that probably would have gone down very well with Parisian audiences at the end of the nineteenth century. Sandra Bernhard realized the staging conceived by Nicolas Joël by allowing the narrative to flow at a brisk pace without ever suggesting any tedium. As to the vocal work, the title roles taken by tenor Clifton Forbis as Samson and mezzo Olga Borodina as Delilah were pure dynamite. The same can be said for Samson’s nemesis, the High Priest of Dagon, sung by baritone Juha Uusitalo. Finally, Frank Zamacona’s direction of the video capture consistently found just the right techniques for alternating between intimate views of the individual characters and the overall grandeur of the setting in which they were situated.

All hands clearly played significant roles in presenting Samson and Delilah as an opera that was far more than mere spectacle.