Samson et Dalila, is an opera by Camille Saint-Saëns, premiered in 1877, in the Grand Ducal Theater of Weimar, Germany. It is the one opera by this French composer that remains part of the modern opera repertory. The second act, the love scene in Dalilah's tent, is one of the set pieces that define French opera.
Saint-Saëns began composing the work as an oratorio in 1868, but his librettist, Ferdinand Lemaire, convinced him of its theatrical potential, and Liszt offered to produce it at Weimar, where he was musical director at the cosmopolitan, progressive and highly musical grand-ducal court. In France the Biblical subject matter created resistance to staging the work, which wasn't heard in France until 1890, first in the provincial city of Rouen. By that time Pauline Viardot, who had championed the opera, for whom it was written and to whom Saint-Saëns dedicated the score, was too old to sing Dalila.
Two of Dalila's arias are particularly well known: "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix" and "Printemps qui commence."
The episode of Samson and Delilah comes from the Hebrew Bible, in the Book of Judges, chapter 16. Like tales of his approximate contemporary Hercules, the violence and erotic extravagance of this folk hero, with its exotic color, reversal of patriarchal strength and catastrophic heroic end, all appealed especially to European Baroque artists of the 17th century.
