Although Samson et Dalila is unmistakably French in its atmosphere, melodic contour and sometimes exotic instrumentation, it often harks back to the oratorio world of Mendelssohn and Handel. This is what Saint-Saëns originally had in mind after all, and the opening sections of Acts I and III involving Samson and the Hebrew chorus certainly have more of that ‘feel’. The opening chorus has been compared to Mendelssohn’s Elijah (“Dieu! Dieu d’Israël!”, “Lord! God of Israel!”) with its blossoming into a fugue at the words “Nous avons vu nos cites renversées” (“We have seen our cities overthrown”). Further, the opening of Act III in the prison at Gaza is reminiscent of the opening of Bach’s St. John’s Passion. The Bach and Mendelssohn models are certainly pieces of music that Saint-Saëns would have been familiar with through his extensive work in church music.
Musicologists and opera lovers have been involved in the ‘oratorio vs. opera’ argument since the work’s first public performances and the touches of the arcane in the structure of the above scenes certainly moves listeners in the former direction (parts of these scenes could even be considered taking the form of a tableau vivant). The fact that there is a limited amount of dramatic action in an opera where the characters essentially ‘stand and sing’ and the two-dimensional quality of the characterization of the male personae in the opera does not help. Neither does the fact that Saint-Saëns chose a biblical subject, the normative literary source for all oratorios. But it is Delilah and she alone who moves this work to be seriously considered an opera. She is three-dimensional, a character of depth whose motivations are more psychological than an oratorio-bound biblical character would normally be allowed.
Delilah’s music also makes a strong argument for Samson as opera. It is fluid, lush, romantic and brilliantly orchestrated with a touch of fantasy and worldly sensuality. Delilah’s music is, in other words, ‘French’! If at the beginning of Acts I and III Saint-Saëns harkens back to the style of Bach and Handel, every moment Delilah is onstage the score glows with a French sensibility. The very choice of the mezzo timbre for her depiction sets her aside from her old German and Italian oratorio counterparts like Judith, Esther or Mary Magdelene and communicates a certain eroticism that would only be at home on the opera stage. Consider “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix”, the most famous excerpt from the work and Delilah’s main aria. The vocal line at the climax of the aria (“Ah! Réponds à ma tendresse”, “Ah! Respond to my tenderness”) is highly chromatic, spiraling downward like the tendrils of a tropical plant. It is, in fact, closely related to Carmen’s habanera and provides much the same dramatic purpose: the seduction of the leading man.
No one can deny the debt that Samson et Dalila owes to the earlier spectacle of Meyerbeer’s operas, the melodic delight of Gounod’s operas or the innovative orchestral textures of Bizet, Saint-Saëns contemporary. But it is the character of Delilah, this biblical femme fatale, who we have to thank for lifting this work from the comparatively static world of oratorio to the world of opera.