Sapho Voval Score: Sappho French & English

Sapho is a pi ce lyrique ("lyric play", an opera in a declamatory style) in five acts. The music was composed by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Cain and Arthur Bern de, based on the novel of the same name by Alphonse Daudet. It was first performed on 27 November 1897 by the Op ra Comique at the Th tre Lyrique on the Place du Ch telet in Paris with Emma Calv as Fanny Legrand. A charming and effective piece, the success of which is highly dependent on the charisma of its lead soprano. "Sapho" is, like so many of Massenet's operas, superbly professional. He wrote well for the voice, orchestrated expertly, knew exactly what he was doing. He well knew how to tickle his audience, and could be outrageously sentimental - as he is in the last act of "Sapho," with the solo violin weeping away in the famous Massenet kind of treacle. "Sapho" is a collation, with its quotes (deliberate) from other operas, its touch of folk music, its in-and-out dances, its opportunities for vocal and histrionic display. It is a "vehicle," ... and sopranos must love it. This is a reprint not a original, very hard to find vocal score in French and English