was astonished by the range and capacity of her voice, realizing at once that she was the perfect choice for the heroine of his new opera, which he had begun to compose at the end of 1886. It is almost certain, however, that he had received the libretto to Esclarmonde much earlier than that, and the meeting with Sybil Sanderson served rather as an additional catalyst – a stimulus to complete the opera. The work was commissioned as a spectacular event to open the Paris Exposition of 1889. During the most intensive period of creation in the summer of 1887, Massenet moved into the Grand Hotel in Vevey, where Miss Sanderson was also staying; there he rehearsed with her each evening the various sections of his new opera as he composed them. The opera was completed by the end of 1888, and stage rehearsals started at Opéra-Comique. Massenet dedicated the work to Sybil Sanderson in gratitude, allowing her signature to stand alongside his own in the manuscript of the score. Rodney Milnes suggests that Massenet's "passion for his leading lady resulted in some of his most chromatically tortuous erotic writing" while observing that the operatic events are "dispatched in just over two hours of music". Crichton notes also the skill of Massenet in writing for male voices - both the tenors Roland and Énéas, but also for the Bishop, the Emperor Phorcas and the King. He also points to the scoring of low instruments, where the bass clarinet and tuba show "an individual application of lessons well learned from the later parts of The Ring, used with a discretion unlikely to upset the general public of the day". Seven black and white projections for the scenes of sorcery, using the magic lantern technology, were created by Eugène Grasset, who also illustrated the original vocal score. After a very successful initial run, however, the opera disappeared from the repertoire and fell into almost complete oblivion. Soon afterwards Sybil Sanderson fell ill. When she died around the start of the 20th century, it seems that Massenet himself lost interest in the opera he had written for her and he discouraged any further productions. The work was not revived until 1923, well after the composer's death. Some short-lived revivals then followed, either staged or in concert performance. It was only in the 1970s that the efforts of Richard Bonynge and Joan Sutherland brought