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Akhmetshina Rules! Berlin
Staatsoper
07/04/2026 - & July 7*, 10, 12, September 6, 10, 13, 2026
Camille Saint‑Saëns : Samson et Dalila, opus 47
Roberto Alagna*/Jonathan Tetelman (Samson), Aigul Akhmetshina*/Marina Prudenskaya (Dalila), Lukasz Golinski (Le Grand‑Prêtre de Dagon), Carles Pachon (Abimélech), Javier Bernardo (Un messager philistin), Nicolas Testé*/William Thomas (Un vieillard hébreu), Alvaro Diana (Premier Philistin), Hanseong Yun*/Irakli Pkhaladze (Second Philistin)
Staatsopernchor, Gerhard Polifka (chorus director), Staatskapelle Berlin, Alexander Soddy (conductor)
Damián Szifron (stage director), Etienne Pluss (sets), Agostino Arrivabene (costumes), Gesine Völlm (costumes), Olaf Freese (lights), Tomasz Kajdański (choreography), Judith Selenko (videography)
(© Matthias Baus)
Samson et Dalila is among those operas that survived not because of their drama but because Saint‑Saëns transformed an improbable biblical tale into a work of extraordinary sensuality. The contrast between the austere, almost prosaic first act and the eroticism of the second remains striking, and it is no surprise that “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” became the composer’s most enduring vocal inspiration.
Martinique-born poet Ferdinand Lemaire (1832‑1879), who wrote the libretto, convinced Saint‑Saëns to transform the biblical story into a through‑composed opera. Drawing on the Old Testament’s Book of Judges (15:4‑30), the opera follows Samson, the Hebrew champion who defeats the Philistines before betraying the secret of his strength to Delilah. Captured and blinded, he regains his power one final time, destroying the Philistine temple during the Bacchanal. Saint‑Saëns balances the work’s monumental, oratorio-inspired grandeur with striking sensuality. While its religious subject and choral writing recall composers such as Charles Gounod and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Delilah’s music evokes a Wagnerian eroticism that intertwines seduction with spiritual conflict. Saint‑Saëns first drafted the opening chorus, “Dieu d’Israël,” but it was another eight years before he composed the celebrated Act II aria, “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix.” The latter remains Saint‑Saëns’s most popular vocal piece. Indeed, the contrast between the prosaic first act and the sensual second act is striking.
After an unsuccessful private presentation, Saint-Saëns shelved Samson et Dalila until Franz Liszt promised to stage it in Weimar. The Franco‑Prussian War delayed these plans, and despite support from the great Pauline Viardot (1821‑1910), Parisian theatres repeatedly rejected the opera. Even a concert performance of the first act in 1875 proved a failure. Saint‑Saëns nevertheless completed the score in 1876, and, with Liszt’s backing, the opera premiered in Weimar in a German translation. While it was immediately successful in Germany, France did not stage the work in its original French until 1890. Due to the expense in mounting the monumental biblical opera with its Bacchanale and crumbling temple, it is not commonly staged today, though it remains one of the most known French operas in great part thanks to Dalila’s popular arias.
Damián Szifron’s first operatic venture did not convince. His staging displayed little understanding of the region’s history, geography, or folklore. The rocky landscapes belonged more to Petra or Cappadocia than to Gaza, while the costumes veered uneasily between Viking fantasy and science fiction. Most tasteless was the decision to dress the Philistine women in authentic Palestinian garments, an idea rendered especially unfortunate by present circumstances.
More problematic still was the characterisation of Dalila. Having shown no reluctance in seducing Samson, she suddenly liberated him and murdered the High Priest in the final act. Such a radical transformation required preparation; none was provided.
The Bacchanale, usually the opera’s theatrical highlight, disappointed. Its choreography resembled a Berlin rave populated by rhythmically challenged revellers. Though a handful of dancers acquitted themselves admirably, the scene lacked the sensuality that is the music’s very essence. Equally gratuitous was the persistent violence, from the beating of the blinded Samson to the ritualised killing of elderly Jewish captives. One occasionally had the impression that the director relished brutality for its own sake.
Etienne Pluss’s severe architectural spaces, animated by Judith Selenko’s restrained projections, proved more successful. The image of the temple columns gradually cracking rather than physically collapsing was both inspired and practical.
Alexander Soddy led the Staatskapelle Berlin with sensitivity and conviction. The orchestra revealed the sophistication of Saint‑Saëns’s orchestration, and the Bacchanale emerged as the evening’s clear musical high point, combining exotic colour and eroticism without descending into vulgarity. If the earlier acts occasionally lacked the same opulence, the quieter passages, especially Dalila’s scenes, unfolded with patience and refinement.
Roberto Alagna’s Samson was conceived less as a biblical colossus than as a man progressively undone by the very certainties that had sustained him. Time has, inevitably, left its imprint upon the voice, and there were moments when the upper register betrayed signs of fatigue. Yet vocal impeccability was never the measure of this portrayal. What remained in the memory was its profound humanity: a leader crushed beneath the burden of his vocation, increasingly vulnerable to forces he scarcely comprehended, and ultimately resigned to a destiny from which there could be no deliverance. Alagna’s achievement lay precisely in his capacity to render Samson both deeply moving and entirely credible.
The evening, however, belonged unequivocally to Aigul Akhmetshina. I first encountered the Russian mezzo‑soprano as Charlotte in Werther in this same city a year ago and was immediately struck by the uncommon intelligence of her artistry. Her Dalila here represented a performance of an altogether higher order. She rejected every familiar convention of the seductive femme fatale and replaced it with something infinitely more disquieting: an emotional opacity that rendered the character at once inscrutable and irresistible. The voice itself possessed both sumptuous warmth and uncommon textual acuity, but it was the psychological exactitude of the portrayal that proved truly exceptional. “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” emerged not as a simple effusion of sensuality but as an exquisitely calculated act of persuasion, in which tenderness and manipulation became inseparably entwined. Every gesture appeared considered, every silence charged with meaning. She dominated the stage not through overt theatrical force but through that rarest of gifts: absolute command of the audience’s attention.
Regrettably, the supporting cast did not attain the same level of distinction. The Polish bass‑baritone Lukasz Golinski’s style of singing stood at a considerable remove from the traditions of French declamation. His High Priest of Dagon appeared to mistake sheer volume for expressive authority; persistent fortissimo and near‑constant exhortation conveyed noise rather than menace. As for the diction, one could only surmise that he was singing in some hitherto undiscovered Romance dialect, for it bore only the most distant relationship to French. The chorus, by contrast, sang with admirable discipline and dramatic purpose, becoming an active participant in the opera’s moral and political tensions, though their own French diction was, unfortunately, often less than exemplary.
Ultimately, the evening’s musical virtues considerably exceeded its theatrical ones. Saint‑Saëns’s score retained all its seductive power, even when the staging did not.
Ossama el Naggar
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