Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921) was an amazingly well-rounded musician with opera composition being only minor part of a life of teaching, performing, conducting and theoretical writing. He began his career as a pianist but was also a virtuoso organist, spending twenty years at the console of the great organ at the Church of the Madeleine in Paris. He had an early intense interest in the music of Wagner (playing the scores of Lohengrin and Tristan for the German master during a visit to Paris), and was taught at the Paris Conservatoire by Fromenthal Halévy, a major player in 19th century French opera. Patronage and the friendship of Charles Gounod and the singer Pauline Viardot helped him get his foot in the stage door and he eventually penned twelve operas, the best known of which is Samson et Dalila.
Much to his consternation (and to that of his public who delighted in his music), he never won the coveted Prix de Rome, the French national prize for composition. But sketches for operatic projects and his reputation as a symphonist eventually convinced Leon Carvalho, intendant of the Théâtre Lyrique,to offer him a libretto for possible production. This first work (Le timbre d’argent) was to remain unperformed for many years and the proposed production never occurred. He began work on his second complete work for the stage, Samson et Dalila, in 1867 but his intention was to set the biblical text as an oratorio, essentially a sacred concert piece for soloists, chorus and orchestra. He was convinced to set it as an opera thanks to his librettist, Ferdinand Lemaire (a distant relation), and he began the composition process with Dalila’s music in the second act. At a musical evening with friends a mezzo-soprano sang “Amour, viens aider!” and “Mon coeur s’ouvre á ta voix” with the composer at the piano. The performance didn’t seem to impress anyone in attendance and instead his friends and colleagues warned him of the uphill struggle necessary to mount a biblically-themed work for the stage, something that never sat well with Parisian audiences.
Saint-Saëns put the work away. But on a concert tour of Weimar he rekindled his old friendship with Franz Liszt, a great supporter of new music, who showed interest in Samson to the point of promising a Weimar production. It was only after the composition of a third opera, however (La princesse jaune), that Saint-Saëns finally felt confident enough to renew work on the score. He eventually finished it in 1876. As promised, Liszt personally arranged for production of the opera at Weimar in 1877 under the baton of Eduard Lassen who was to replace Liszt as the music director there. A second German production (Hamburg) followed in 1882 and the work finally reached his home country at Rouen in 1890. The Paris Opéra mounted Samson in 1892 with a sumptuous production at the Palais Garnier. With that, Samson achieved a repertory status throughout the world as an excellent example of mid-19th century French Romanticism.