Massenet composed his masterful opera Thaïs for the young California soprano Sibyl Sanderson, for whom he adapted or composed many of his other famous roles. The libretto by Louis Gallet is based on Anatole France’s poem-turned-novel that took the world by storm when published in serial form in 1889. He in turn had taken inspiration from a tenth-century Latin play by German nun Hrostvitha about an Egyptian courtesan-turned-saint, who reportedly lived in the fourth century, and Paphnutius, a monk who made it his mission to convert her.

The opera opened at the Paris Opéra on March 16, 1894, rather than the Opéra Comique, owing to a dispute between Sanderson and impresario Léon Carvalho. Though only a marginal success until a 1903 production in Italy, posterity has ranked Thaïs on an artistic par with Massenet’s Manon and Werther.

Scored for solo violin and orchestra, the poetic Méditation is heard at the outset of Act II, Scene 2, to portray Thaïs’s conversion from harlot to religious disciple. Massenet ingeniously derives this music from Athanaël’s erotic visions and part of his hymn (Athanaël is the monk’s name in the opera) and later reuses the music to great effect in the oasis and death scenes.

A plethora of transcriptions of the Méditation exist for violin and piano as well as for almost every instrument imaginable, including four accordions. Massenet himself made an arrangement for voice and keyboard in 1894 as an “Ave Maria,” which even at the time was introduced into marriage services. The exquisite melody still manages to transcend no matter the medium.

—©Jane Vial Jaffe