Saint-Saëns’ poème lyrique Hélène, Nellie Melba and Beyond

Abstract

Saint-Saëns’ poéme lyrique Hélène of 1904 was not, as is continually claimed, written for the Australian soprano Nellie Melba; however, she premiered it and, for a short while at least, was eager to promote it. Saint-Saëns loved Melba’s interpretation of the role of Hélène, and also loved the work, believing it to be the best operatic work he had ever written. Yet its performance at the Paris Opéra in 1919 was described, by one critic, as the ‘convulsion before eternal sleep’. This metaphor has been unwittingly continued in the rhetoric surrounding the recently released recording of the work by the Australian label Melba recordings (2008), where its revival has been described as the ‘awakening of a sleeping beauty’. This paper examines the reasons behind the death of the work on the operatic stage, looking in particular at how it suffered by being drawn into the politics of the Prix de Rome. Melba’s brief but close relationship with Saint-Saëns during 1904 and 1905 is also examined and suggestions made for the possibility that Hélène did not really die but continued living outside the opera house.