The story of Samson can be found, of course, in the Bible, the book of Judges, chapters 13 through 16.The tale which is dramatized in Saint-Saëns opera is found in the last chapter, dealing with the Philistine’s attempt through Delilah to find the source of his strength.As with most of the more memorable biblical tales, however, the ‘back story’ is quite as interesting as the part that is most often related to us.The first three chapters deal with Samson’s birth (a promise made through an angel of God to a woman who is thought to be sterile, thereby impressing upon the people of Judah the significance of his place in salvation history), Samson’s attempt to marry a Philistine woman (with tragic results for her, her family and her people) and the more familiar tale of Samson’s vengeance on the Philistine’s with the jawbone of an ass (setting up an impressive list of feats that could only be considered possible through a man of God). After establishing Samson’s strength and special qualities as ‘set apart from birth by God’, the biblical authors introduce Delilah, a woman with whom he has fallen in love, and who is induced by Philistine leaders to discover what it is that makes him so physically strong (for her efforts, Delilah is offered ‘eleven hundred shekels of silver’, about 28 pounds, from each of the rulers of the Philistines).Samson deceives her three times with false information until, protesting that he doesn’t truly love her, he gives in and tells her that the answer is to be found in the fact that his hair has never been shorn, an outward sign of his ‘chosen’ status among the people of Judah as a ‘Nazirite’, meaning one consecrated to God.The Nazirite vow (related in the Bible’s book of Numbers, 6:1-21) binds a person to three outward signs of sacred consecration: not to take wine (because wine is a product of the vine which symbolizes a settled existence rather than a nomadic one), never to cut the hair and to never have contact with the dead.Samuel and John the Baptist are other examples of characters in the Bible who seemingly took a Nazirite vow, and St. Paul was known to occasionally turn to the vow for temporary periods in his life as a form of purification.(Although Jesus is often called ‘Nazarene’ in the New Testament, there is no root connection between ‘Nazarene’ and ‘Nazirite’).
The libretto for the opera was written by Ferdinand Lemaire, a native of Martinique, a Creole, and a relative of Saint Saëns by marriage to one of his cousins.The composer was fond of the young man who was something of a poet, showing his affection by setting two of Lemaire’s poems to music (“Souvenance” and “Tristesse” for voice and piano).Although Saint-Saëns had originally intended Samson to be an oratorio based on Voltaire’s libretto for Rameau (1733, although the opera itself was abandoned and never performed), Lemaire was convinced that the subject and the text were worthy of operatic treatment.According to the composer himself, “A young relative of mine had married a charming young man who wrote verse on the side.I realized that he was gifted and had in fact a real talent.I asked him to work with me on an oratorio on a biblical subject.‘An oratorio!’, he said, ‘no, let’s make it an opera!’, and he began to dig through the Bible while I outlined the plan of the work, even sketching scenes, and leaving him only the versification to do.” Under the composer’s guidance, Lemaire was able to achieve a libretto that has aspects of both the originally conceived oratorio and something close to opera, although the dramatic action in this beautiful work is somewhat limited.
The libretto concentrates on chapter 16 of Judges, ignoring the three instances of Samson’s attempt to throw Delilah off from understanding the source of his strength.Another more important difference exists in the two versions of the story: unlike the biblical Delilah our operatic character turns down the monetary rewards offered by the Philistines out of sheer patriotism and simply to prove the superiority of her seductive charms.This makes Delilah, along with her music, closer to the world of opera than to the world of oratorio.