Premiere at the Bolshoi Theatre: 2 December 2024
Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 22 February 2025
Musorgsky worked tirelessly on the plot of the opera Salammbô from 1863 to 1866. The opera was essentially composed independently from The Five and Mily Balakirev, who during those years was Musorgsky’s musical mentor. According to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer occasionally allowed extracts from Salammbô to be performed within the circle and these extracts “at times drew the most tremendous approval for the beauty of their themes and ideas, while at others they drew the most incredible censure for their lack of order and muddle.” The generally sceptical attitude within The Five to Musorgsky’s first attempt at an opera (it is indicative that not a single one of even the completed numbers of the score of was ever performed at the concerts of the Free School of Music run by Balakirev) and his friends’ doubts about his abilities seem to have been the main reason why the composer refused to continue with the work. Musorgsky did not, however, reject the musical material of Salammbô, realising its high artistic merits. In later years, the composer would turn to the music of the opera on several occasions as a kind of musical “backroom”, borrowing from it certain themes and more developed episodes for his new opuses (among them Boris Godunov and the chorus Joshua).
The source of the opera’s plot was Gustave Flaubert’s novel Salammbô, a Russian translation of which was first published in 1863. Writing the libretto himself, Musorgsky did not entirely follow the novel’s plot: it was the composer who introduced the motif of the enslavement of the Libyans by Carthage as a reason for their insurrection (with Flaubert, the reason was another one, the hired Libyans having not been paid for their work). The composer planned for Salammbô to have four acts, though the music of the surviving original score includes the completed music in part only; this includes the separate numbers Song of the Balearic Islander from Act I, War Song of the Libyans (traditionally performed in Act I, though going by its content it should belong to Act II), Chorus of the Priestesses from the opera’s finale and the following expanded scenes: The Temple of Tanit (Act II, Scene 2), The Heathen Temple of Moloch (Act III, Scene 1) and The Dungeon of the Acropolis (Finale, Scene 1). According to some sources, Musorgsky composed but in all probability did not write down some further scenes, in particular a love scene featuring Mathô and Salammbô.
Arguably, the strongest impression made on audiences when first listening to the music of Salammbô is admiration – of the beauty and the refined poeticism of the lyrical episodes, the scale and the dramatic tension of the crowd scenes (the most vivid of which is the sacrifice of children to Moloch) and the power of Mathô’s persona. In terms of character, several pages of the opera’s score (for example, the start of the scene of the rite in Tanit’s temple, Tanit’s hymn in Act II and the chorus of priestesses in the finale) may be considered unique as they were never to be continued in any of Musorgsky’s other music.
The undeniable power of Musorgsky’s music for Salammbô has repeatedly spurred attempts to bring the opera to the stage, despite its incomplete state. These efforts have sought to overcome the challenges posed by the work’s fragmentary nature, the composer’s reuse of significant portions of the material in his later works, and the prevailing belief that completing the opera is an impossible task.
Much of the credit for returning Salammbô to the Russian and international music scene belongs to the Mariinsky Theatre. In 1989 the theatre commissioned the renowned St Petersburg composer Vyacheslav Nagovitsyn to create a performing edition of the opera. This edition presents the music of Salammbô in its most complete form, incorporating numbers orchestrated by Musorgsky himself, along with orchestrations by Rimsky-Korsakov and Vissarion Shebalin. At Valery Gergiev’s suggestion, Nagovitsyn expanded this edition in 1991, adding music from several works by Musorgsky that share thematic connections with Salammbô, including the song Night, which illuminates the character of the opera’s heroine. The Mariinsky Theatre premiered this version in the same year at the evocative setting of the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Mérida, Spain.
Sergey Novikov’s production takes this a step further. It features a newly added duet for Salammbô and Shahabarim, in which the astute listener will recognise echoes of the duet for Marina Mnisheck and the Jesuit Rangoni from Boris Godunov. This reconstruction is entirely fitting, as the duet was initially conceived for Salammbô, as evidenced by Musorgsky’s sketches. In addition to the singers, the production also features a narrator, a dramatic actor who takes on the role of Hamilcar, Salammbô’s father, a character who never appears in Musorgsky’s score. This production breathes new life into a fascinating operatic rarity, inviting audiences to experience the captivating world of Salammbô and to appreciate the depth and breadth of Musorgsky’s genius.
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