O ma lyre immortelle

SAPHO
Opéra en 3 actes
Composer : Charles Gounod (1818–1893)
Libretto : Émile Augier
First performance : Paris Opéra (salle Le Peletier), 16 April 1851

SETTING: Olympic Games and on the isle of Lesbos, 6th century BC

PLOT: Sapho, the lyric poetess (born between 630 and 612 BC – died c. 570 BC) and the courtesan Glycère both love Phaon. Glycère discovers that Phaon is part of a conspiracy against the tyrant Pittacus. She wheedles the plot out of Pythéas, and uses this secret to force Sapho to renounce Phaon, to let him leave Lesbos alone and make him think she never loved him. Glycère has informed the authorities, but makes the conspirators think Sapho betrayed them. In despair, Sapho throws herself off the Leucadian cliffs.

Gounod’s first opera was critically admired but not a popular success. Although it starred Pauline Viardot, the first Fidès in Meyerbeer’s ‘Prophète’ (1849) [
[1] ‘the work of an excellent musician, whose taste is always fine and true, high-minded, and which aspires to its own place in the history of art’.

The work was a return to the eighteenth century operas of Gluck, with its Classical setting and austere score. Berlioz, who idolised Gluck, admired Gounod’s opera:

‘It seems I have the misfortune to be neither of my time nor of my country. For me, Sapho’s unhappy love and that other obsessive love of Glycère and Phaon’s error, Alcée’s unavailing enthusiasm, the dreams of liberty that culminate in exile, the Olympic festival and the worship of art by an entire people, the admirable final scene in which the dying Sapho returns for a moment to life and hears on one side the last distant farewell of Phaon to the Lesbian shore and on another the joyous song of a shepherd awaiting his young mistress, and the bleak wilderness, the deep sea, moaning for its prey, in which that immense love will find a worthy tomb, and then the beautiful Greek scenery, the fine costumes and elegant buildings, the noble ceremonies combining gravity and grace – all this, I confess, touches me to the heart, exalts the mind, excites and disturbs and enchants me more than I can say.’

No. 19 – Stances : ‘O ma lyre immortelle’
Sapho throws herself off the rocks of Lesbos into the sea, distraught that her lover Phaon has left with her rival Glycère.

Sapho (mezzo-soprano): Marilyn Horne