ten-day period, the other two being Hérodiade (also a New York premiere) and Werther. It was revived in a concert performance at Carnegie Hall on 23 January 1979 with Elisabeth Söderström as Fanny Legrand. Harold C. Schonberg, writing in The New York Times, commented: It was fun to hear this dated piece, but the chances are that not many impresarios will be rushing to revive it. "Sapho" is, like so many of Massenet's operas, superbly professional. He wrote well for the voice, orchestrated expertly, knew exactly what he was doing. He well knew how to tickle his audience, and could be outrageously sentimental – as he is in the last act of "Sapho," with the solo violin weeping away in the famous Massenet kind of treacle. "Sapho" is a collation, with its quotes (deliberate) from other operas, its touch of folk music, its in-and-out dances, its opportunities for vocal and histrionic display. It is a "vehicle," ... and sopranos must love it. The opera was also performed at Wexford Festival Opera in 2001 with Ermonela Jaho, and at the Massenet Festival in Saint-Étienne in 2003 conducted by Laurent Campellone. Roles Synopsis Place: Paris Time: late 19th century The story concerns the beautiful Sapho, an artist's model of a certain age and notorious life, whose real name is Fanny Legrand. She begins an affair with a young man, Jean Gaussin, but the relationship, as is so often the case in opera, is ill-fated. Act 1 A fancy ball at Caoudal's studio Jean Gaussin is a shy and unsophisticated young man from Provence, who has come to Paris to study. At a costume ball given by the sculptor Caoudal, amid the noisy dance music and the mad whirl, the confused Gaussin withdraws and sings of his native country, in a broad and expressive cantabile, one of the few aria-like passages that the opera contains. Fanny, whose fancy is captured by this young man, so strangely different from her friends, promptly makes his acquaintance, and, as the guests are shouting for her to come to supper, takes him away with her. Act 2 Rooms of Jean Gaussin Jean Gaussin is in his lodgings, where his parents are installing him as a student. He sings a song, "O Magali, ma tant amado", based on a traditional melody, which Gounod had already used in Mireille. It reappears later and adds a bit of Provençal local