Aria of Dalila (Samson et Dalila)

Saint-Saëns began the work in the late 1860s as an oratorio and only gradually turned it into an opera; French theatres refused a biblical subject on stage. Liszt, who had heard the second act, undertook to produce it at Weimar, where it was given in German translation on 2 December 1877. France resisted for another thirteen years: Rouen staged it in 1890, the Paris Opéra in 1892. The score keeps something of its oratorio origins in the weight given to the chorus, while Dalila's music works by seduction of line rather than by declamation — persuasion is the dramatic mechanism.