Belle Époque Gala

While the 1900 World's Fair drew the world's attention, the heart of musical creation had already been beating in Paris for several decades. The program for this concert sheds light on the sources of inspiration of this sumptuous period. By turning to the Orient, composers renewed their palette without losing any of their worldly elegance, as demonstrated by Saint-Saëns' Mélodies persanes (1870) and La Tombelle'sOrientale (1888). Antiquity inspired scores combining mysticism and pagan sensuality: Massenet's La Vierge, "légende sacrée" (1880), Mel Bonis' Danse sacrée (1898), or Debussy's Danse sacrée et Danse profane (1904). It is perhaps to Verlaine's Fêtes Galantes that we owe Debussy's "Clair de lune" (1905), a movement from the Suite bergamasque orchestrated by Caplet, himself the author of spellbinding melodies after Verlaine. In 1913, before the Great War put an end to the Belle Époque, Dubois composed his Fantasietta with a typically French art of color.