Samson et Dalila, Op. 47

Full performances of Samson et Dalila trace the biblical story across three acts: Samson rallies the enslaved Hebrews, falls under the spell of Delilah, and is betrayed when she cuts his hair and steals his strength, leading to his final act of vengeance against the Philistines. But most orchestral concerts, including pops and gala programs, present only the "Bacchanale" from Act III, a stand-alone orchestral dance that has taken on a life of its own. It opens with a snaking oboe melody built on close, exotic-sounding intervals meant to evoke the ancient Near East. The strings and winds trade this melody back and forth, the tempo gradually quickening, until the whole orchestra locks into a driving, percussive dance rhythm. Brass and cymbals push the volume upward in surges, each one bigger than the last, as if a crowd on stage were being whipped into a frenzy. The piece keeps circling back to that opening oboe tune, transformed each time by faster tempos and thicker orchestration, before a final headlong sprint to the finish. Listeners coming from ballet or film scores will recognize its DNA in countless later "exotic dance" cues. No singing is involved when it is performed as a standalone excerpt.

Saint-Saëns began composing Samson et Dalila in the early 1870s, drawn to the Old Testament story of the Israelite strongman betrayed by the Philistine woman he loved. French opera houses, wary of a biblical subject on stage, repeatedly declined it. Through the intervention of Franz Liszt, who admired the score, the opera received its premiere not in France but in Weimar, Germany, in 1877, sung in German translation. It took over a decade for the work to reach the Paris Opera, finally staged there in French in 1892. Once established, it became the most durable of Saint-Saëns's operas and the only one to remain in the regular international repertoire. Its Act III "Bacchanale," a orchestral dance depicting a pagan celebration, was excerpted early on for concert performance and has since become one of the most frequently programmed orchestral showpieces drawn from French opera.