Bacchanale: Saint-Saëns et la Méditerranée

Camille Saint-Saëns travelled far from his Paris home in search of warmth and respite from illness. The Frenchman’s wanderlust carried him to San Francisco, South America and Sri Lanka. But it was Algeria that proved irresistible, drawing him back repeatedly until his death there in 1921. The composer’s lifelong passion for Algerian culture flowed into his music, the powerful influence of which registers clearly in the ear-opening, heartwarming debut album from Orchestre Divertimento and its charismatic founder-conductor, Zahia Ziouani. Bacchanale: Saint-Saëns et la Méditerranée reveals the connections between works from different worlds. “It was my dream to record this music and I wanted to show people the links between the music of Saint-Saëns and Arabic music,” Zahia Ziouani tells Apple Music Classical. Her album includes the “Danse Bacchanale” from Saint-Saëns’ opera Samson et Dalila, his Jota aragonese, Suite Algérienne and movements from the Persian-inspired ballet Parysatis. It also embraces the composer’s early Tarentelle for flute, clarinet and orchestra, inspired by his first trip to Italy. Saint-Saëns’ scores are intermingled with music from the Maghreb, performed on traditional instruments by Ensemble Amedyez. Their contribution contains the exquisite A vava Inouva by Algerian Kabyle singer-songwriter Idir and Rachid Brahim-Djelloul’s freshly composed introduction to Jota aragonese. They provide short improvisations, too, including one for violin and cello inspired by the aria “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Samson et Dalila, and a haunting version of the song Leyla. Long before landing in Algeria, Saint-Saëns learned about Arab musical traditions from the writings of the pioneering ethnomusicologist Francisco Salvador-Daniel, who lived in Algiers during the 1850s. Ziouani’s album concludes with Chanson mauresque de Tunis, an Arabic tune notated by Salvador-Daniel. “Saint-Saëns and Salvador-Daniel decided to discover Algerian culture,” she notes. “They went to places that were only frequented by Algerians to be immersed in the culture, especially music, song and dance.” Saint-Saëns’ legendary ability to memorise music at first hearing proved invaluable. He based the Danse Bacchanale’s famous “oriental” melody on a genuine Algerian tune, observes Ziouani. The work’s solo oboe tune, she adds, evokes the surnãy, a double-reed instrument found in folk cultures in North Africa and beyond, while its iron castanets recall karkabous, metal percussion instruments common to the Maghreb. Divertimento’s debut album coincides with the orchestra’s 25th anniversary celebrations. Its founder’s journey to the conductor’s podium from Paris’ northern suburbs, among the poorest neighbourhoods in France, is recounted in Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar’s biopic Divertimento. The film shows how young Zahia defied and disproved those who insisted it was impossible for a woman to become a conductor. “I grew up in the Paris suburbs,” she recalls. “For me, it was normal to be in the inner districts and listen to classical music. I decided to create Divertimento to develop a new way of listening and show that classical music can live everywhere for everyone. I want to show that there are no borders in music, and that orchestral music is a meeting place. I like the links between people, between artists, and between cultures and music. And it was very important for me to have my orchestra to present these new ideas.” In addition to their work in the concert hall, Divertimento also reaches audiences in inner city community centres, schools, prisons, rural areas and places otherwise untouched by classical orchestras. Zahia Ziouani, who served as conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Algeria, was in Algiers with French President Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2022 as part of a diplomatic mission to improve Franco-Algerian relations. “Now the people of France and the people of Algeria want to build the future together and not always think about the past and the difficulties between these two countries,” she says. “It’s possible to build the future with the music of the past, with Saint-Saëns, and make it possible for people to discover the real classical Arabic music. To live together we have to know more about the culture of each country. And with music, it’s a way to do this.”