Camille Saint-Saëns

Saint-Saens
  • Born: 9 October 1835, Paris, France
  • Died: 16 December 1921, Algiers, Algeria

Saint-Saëns was a genius.  He was a child prodigy who accompanied a Beethoven violin sonata on the piano at the age of five.  Wagner considered him France’s greatest composer; Berlioz, Liszt, and Gounod all thought highly of him.  He had a brilliant, inquiring mind.  He wrote essays on mathematics, astronomy, optics, philosophy and aesthetics.  He was a world traveller.

Several of his compositions – the Danse macabre, the Carnaval des animaux, the Organ Symphony – are popular favourites.

OPERAS

  1. La princesse jaune (1872) ***
  2. Le timbre d’argent (1877) ****
  3. Samson et Dalila (1877)
  4. Étienne Marcel (1879)
  5. Henry VIII (1883)
  6. Proserpine (1887)
  7. Ascanio (1890) *****
  8. Phryné (1893) **
  9. Frédégonde (1895; music of Ernest Guiraud completed by Saint-Saëns)
  10. Déjanire (1898)
  11. Les barbares (1901)
  12. Hélène (1904) *
  13. L’ancêtre (1906)