Camille Saint-Saëns. Samson and Delilah (Premiere)

Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

Premiere

Music Director and Conductor: Vladimir Tkachenko
Stage Director: Anna Guseva
Coproduction of Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and Diaghilev Festival

Delilah — Natalia Buklaga, Svetlana Kashirina
Samson — Boris Rudak, David Yesayan
High Priest — Eduard Morozov,
Viktor Pogudin
Abimelech — Timofey Pavlenko,
Alexander Egorov
Old Hebrew — Rustam Kasimov,
Oleg Budaratsky
Messenger — Anatoly Shliman,
Sergey Kostarev
First Philistine — Danis Khuzin, Sergey Vlasov
Second Philistine — Alexey Gerasimov,
Ernest Bagdasarov
Boy — Dmitry Dobryanskikh,
Miron Tkachenko
Other Delilah — Elizaveta Chernova,
Anastasia Abramova
Other Samson — Ruslan Ilzigitov,
Alexander Sushin

Chorus and Orchestra of Perm Opera
and Ballet Theatre
artists of the Evgeny Panfilov Ballet company

16+

Samson and Delilah (1877) is a masterpiece of French musical theatre and a pinnacle of Camille Saint-Saëns’s (1835–1921) career. The opera tells the biblical story of the legendary hero Samson and the cunning seductress Delilah, who deceitfully uncovers the secret of his supernatural strength. Merging the grandeur of the Old Testament with the sensual intensity of the music, Saint-Saëns emerges in Samson and Delilah as the heir to the tradition of 18th-century French lyric tragedy. It is no coincidence that librettist Ferdinand Lemaire decided to base on a text by Voltaire, originally written in 1734 for Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Samson. A gem of the global opera repertoire, Samson and Delilah is a rare guest on Russian stages: the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre and the Diaghilev Festival present the first Russian production of this Saint-Saëns opera in recent years.