Salammbô is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in five acts composed by Ernest Reyer

Ernest Reyer

Ernest Reyer, the adopted name of Louis Étienne Ernest Rey, was a French opera composer and music critic .- Biography :...

 to a French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Camille du Locle

Camille du Locle

Camille du Locle was a French theatre director and a librettist. He was born in Orange, France. From 1862 he served as assistant to his father-in-law, Émile Perrin at the Paris Opéra, moving in 1870 to the Opéra-Comique....

. It is based on the novel Salammbô

Salammbô (novel)

Salammbô is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert. It is set in Carthage during the third century BCE, immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt which took place shortly after the First Punic War. Flaubert's main source was Book I of Polybius's Histories...

by Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert

Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...

 (1862). The opera was first performed at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie

La Monnaie

Le Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie , or the Koninklijke Muntschouwburg is a theatre in Brussels, Belgium....

 in Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 on 10 February 1890

1890 in music

- Events :* September 9 - Edward Elgar's concert overture Froissart is premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester* George W. Johnson records phonograph cylinders...

. The American premiere was at the French Opera House

French Opera House

The French Opera House was an opera house in New Orleans. It was one of the city's landmarks from its opening in 1859 until it was destroyed by fire in 1919...

 in New Orleans on 25 January 1900 with Lina Pacary in the title role. This rarely nowadays performed opera received the last performance in Paris Opera

Paris Opera

The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...

 in 1943, and the most recent one in Marseilles on 27 September 2008, in commemoration of 100th anniversary of Reyer's death.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, (Conductor: )
Hamilcar, Carthaginian leader	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Maurice Renaud Maurice Renaud Maurice Renaud , was a cultured French operatic baritone. He enjoyed an international reputation for the superlative quality of his singing and the brilliance of his acting.-Early years:...
Salammbô, a priestess, Hamilcar's daughter	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Rose Caron Rose Caron Rose Caron was a French operatic soprano.Rose Caron was born at Monnerville . She studied at the Paris Conservatoire but was not taken on at the Paris Opera; her husband, an accompanist, encouraged her to take lessons from Marie Sasse who helped her to get engagements at the opera in Brussels...
Taanach, Salammbo's servant	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Shahabarim, high priest of Tanit	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Edmond Vergnet Edmond Vergnet Edmond-Alphonse Vergnet was a French operatic tenor.-Biography:Vergnet studied singing in Paris before making his professional opera début at the Paris Opéra in 1874 as Raimbaut in Gaetano Donizetti's Robert le diable...
Narr'Havas, King of Numidia	bass	Sentein
Giscon, Carthaginian general	bass	Peeters
Mathô, chief Libyan mercenary	tenor	Henri Sellier
Spendius, Greek slave	baritone	Max Bouvet Max Bouvet Maximilien-Nicolas Bouvet was a French operatic baritone.Bouvet was born at La Rochelle. In 1875 he appeared at the Eldorado café-concert in Paris with the song Les myrtes son flétries by Gustave Nadaud and de Faure....
Autharite, Gaulish mercenary	bass	Challet

Other opera adaptations

In 1863, Modeste Mussorgsky also started writing text and music for an opera based on Flaubert's novel, but he never managed to complete the work. Other versions were written by V. Fornari (1881), Niccolò Massa (1886), Eugeniusz Morawski-Dąbrowa, Josef Matthias Hauer

Josef Matthias Hauer

Josef Mattias Hauer was an Austrian composer and music theorist. He is most famous for developing, independent of and a year or two before Arnold Schoenberg, a method for composing with all 12 notes of the chromatic scale.Hauer "detested all art that expressed ideas, programmes or feelings,"...

 (1930), Alfredo Cuscinà (1931), Veselin Stoyanov (1940) and Franco Casavola

Franco Casavola

Franco Casavola was a Futurist composer and theorist.-Futurist movement:In a letter dated 1 October 1922, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti wrote to the composer, theorist and writer Franco Casavola:...

 (1948). Contemporary French composer Philippe Fénélon's Salammbô was first performed in the Opéra Bastille

Opéra Bastille

L'Opéra Bastille ' is a modern opera house in Paris, France. It is the home base of the Opéra national de Paris and was designed to replace the Palais Garnier, which is nowadays mainly used for ballet performances....

 in 1998.

Cultural references

For the film score of Orson Welles

Orson Welles

George Orson Welles , best known as Orson Welles, was an American film director, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio...

' Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane

Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...

, Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann

Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...

 wrote a quasi-Romantic aria for the fictional opera Salammbô performed by Kane's second wife, Susan Alexander. The text is based on a speech by Jean Racine

Jean Racine

Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

 for the play Phèdre

Phèdre

Phèdre is a dramatic tragedy in five acts written in alexandrine verse by Jean Racine, first performed in 1677.-Composition and premiere:...

. According to Tim Dirks it was actually John Houseman who composed the aria.