Clair de Femme

À New York, deux personnes sont sauvagement assassinées par une nuit glaciale de pleine lune. Sur chacune des scènes de crime, une signature : une pendule au cadran rond, et qui donne l'heure exacte. Cloué dans son fauteuil roulant, le criminologue Lincoln Rhyme en appelle à Amelia Sachs, la femme qu'il aime et sa partenaire. Mais Amelia mène sa propre enquête, la première en tant que chef détective. Soucieuse de ne pas se laisser absorber par la poursuite de l'Horloger - ainsi que l'assassin s'est lui-même baptisé -, elle va faire sur la police d'étranges découvertes qui risquent de perturber sa carrière et sa relation avec Rhyme. De son côté, l'Horloger prépare un meurtre diabolique qui sera son chef-d'oeuvre…

‘It will be a strange score: people will either not like it at all, or will like it enormously’, prophesied Camille Saint-Saëns a few days before the premiere of Déjanire. The opera, first performed in Monte Carlo on 14 March 1911, is based on incidental music written in 1898 for the Béziers Arena. Fascinated by the subject, the composer soon wanted to give it a second, more ambitious life. He therefore conceived a mythological epic that inspired ‘powerfully evocative music’, according to Gabriel Fauré, who was struck by the impact of the choral writing.

‘It will be a strange score: people will either not like it at all, or will like it enormously’, prophesied Camille Saint-Saëns a few days before the premiere of Déjanire. The opera, first performed in Monte Carlo on 14 March 1911, is based on incidental music written in 1898 for the Béziers Arena. Fascinated by the subject, the composer soon wanted to give it a second, more ambitious life. He therefore conceived a mythological epic that inspired ‘powerfully evocative music’, according to Gabriel Fauré, who was struck by the impact of the choral writing. Yet the love drama that rends the heroine’s heart engenders wildly romantic duets and culminates in the public immolation of Hercules, set ablaze by the poisoned tunic offered to him by the fallen queen. This new Déjanire received high praise from the critics, who flocked to Monaco to see it. But the modernist path that French opera was taking at the time did not allow the work to survive the upheavals of the First World War. It would have been a shame to prolong this unjustified ostracism any longer.