Camille Saint-Saëns makesSamson et Dalila (1877) a work that is a synthesis of oratorio and grand-opéra: biblical and solemn, monumental, almost carved in marble and yet sparkling with color, teeming with orgiastic dances and sinful passions. The inspiration for the part of Delilah was Pauline Viardot, an intellectual musician, a mezzo-soprano with a voice comparable, precisely according to Saint-Saëns, to the aroma of bitter oranges. It was she who sang the opera’s private preview in the author’s home, and since then the philistine femme fatale has been able to contend even with Carmen for the palm of the seductress par excellence, whose sinuous melodies are the work’s pivotal, opposite pole to Samson’s declamatory. Proust on his deathbed wanted to listen to “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix,” the highest degree of erotic exhilaration: at the association between the song and the taste of citrus seems to blossom a fleur du mal. On the other hand, were not the cursed poets also fervent Wagnerians? And were they not also Saint-Saëns? It will be no accident, perhaps, that Samson et Dalila debuted in German in Weimar before appearing, in Rouen in 1890, in its original language. It was not an immediate success, but mezzo-sopranos (and a few sopranos) did not miss the opportunity to elect at least the three arias from Delilah among their most beloved banners.