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PHILIPPE CASSARD 27
It was in January 1907 that the soprano Lucienne Bréval suggested to Fauré that
he should write a
Pénélope
and proposed the young librettist and dramatist René
Fauchois as his collaborator.
The work was begun in April 1907 and completed in August 1912. Premiered with
great success in Monte Carlo in April 1913, with Lucienne Bréval and Charles
Rousselière as Penelope and Ulysses, Fauré’s opera went on to a triumphal run
in Paris as part of the inaugural season of the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (May
1913); it then suffered the consequences of that theatre’s bankruptcy the following
autumn, but was subsequently seen at La Monnaie in Brussels. A revival was in
preparation at the Opéra-Comique when the Great War broke out: as a result, the
opera remained in the shadows for five long years, and by 1918 it no longer had
the appeal of novelty, but at the same was too little known because it had not
had sufficient performances. Nevertheless, it was revived regularly at the Opéra-
Comique between the two wars. In 1943 it entered the repertoire of the Opéra
de Paris and was given there a number of times until 1949 – since when it has
never reappeared on the programme . . . But Fauré’s opera did continue to enjoy
fine concert performances in the season of the Orchestre National de la Radio-
Télévision Française under the direction of Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, with a new
and splendid Penelope, Régine Crespin, whose interpretation (recorded in 1956)
has fortunately been released on disc.