Finding Inner Peace with Massenet's Meditation from Thais
The Backstory

A professor in his prime

Back in 1892, I was having a wonderful time teaching composition at the Paris Conservatoire while basking in the fresh success of my opera Werther. I had been a professor there since 1878, which meant I spent a lot of my days correcting student counterpoint and dreaming of my next stage project. When I came across the 1890 novel by Anatole France about a fourth-century Egyptian courtesan and a stubborn monk, I knew right away it belonged in the theater. My librettist Louis Gallet helped me shape the story into an opera in three acts, giving me plenty of room for both grand drama and quiet reflection.

Writing for my favorite voice

I wrote the title role specifically for the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson, a dear friend and muse whose voice I already knew inside and out. A few years earlier, in 1889, I had composed Esclarmonde for her, and she had the rare gift of making the hardest notes sound as natural as breathing. Between 1892 and October 1893, I worked on the score in Paris and out in the country in Égreville, always keeping her stage presence in mind. Having a muse like that makes composing much easier, though it does mean the rest of the cast has to work twice as hard to keep up.

A monk and a courtesan walk into Alexandria

The plot follows the monk Athanaël, who travels to Alexandria determined to convert the famous courtesan Thais to Christianity. Instead of a simple sermon, their encounter turns into a tug-of-war between earthly pleasure and spiritual devotion. In the middle of the second act, right after Athanaël confronts her, Thais needs time alone to actually think over what he has said. Since you cannot easily sing an aria about sitting quietly in deep thought, I decided to let the orchestra do the talking between the two scenes.

Giving the singers a rest

That instrumental interlude became Meditation from Thais, and despite coming from the middle of an opera, there is not a single word sung in it. Many people today assume the title refers to Eastern meditation or general relaxation, as if I wrote it for a quiet afternoon in a tea shop. In reality, I marked the opening Andante religioso because the music traces Thais going through a serious spiritual crisis and turning toward faith. I did sneak in a chorus near the end when the main tune returns, but I kept them hidden offstage and had them sing without words so they wouldn't interrupt the violin.

Why I skipped the opus numbers

If you go looking for an opus number on the score of Meditation from Thais, you will be searching for a very long time. I never bothered assigning opus numbers to my operas, preferring to let the titles speak for themselves without turning my music into an accounting ledger. Later music librarians clearly couldn't stand the mess and gave the full opera numbers like DO 24 and IJM 237 in their catalogues. In my own early scores, I simply called this interlude Méditation or Méditation religieuse, which told the conductor everything he needed to know.

An opening night wardrobe malfunction

We finally premiered the complete opera on March 16, 1894, at the Opéra Garnier in Paris, with Paul Taffanel conducting and Jean-François Delmas singing the role of Athanaël. The evening became the talk of the town before my interlude even started, because during the first act, a strap on Sibyl Sanderson's costume gave way and left her exposed onstage. Whether that broken strap was an honest accident or a clever bit of theater publicity is something nobody knows for sure to this day. Either way, the Parisian audience suddenly paid very close attention to the rest of the performance.

Critics clutch their pearls

The music critics in 1894 gave the opera a rather mixed reception, mostly because putting religious devotion and earthly eroticism on the same stage made them uncomfortable. While the reviewers argued over the morals of the story, the public fell head over heels for the quiet violin interlude in Act II. It turned out that a five-minute instrumental piece about silent reflection was much easier for everyone to agree on than a three-act drama. I still cared deeply about the rest of the opera, of course, so I went back and premiered a revised version at the Opéra Garnier in April 1898.

Escaping the opera house

My publisher in Paris, Heugel & Cie, realized right away in 1894 that this one melody had a life of its own outside the theater. That very same year, they brought out an arrangement for solo violin and piano made by the Belgian violinist Martin-Pierre Marsick. Suddenly, you didn't need a full opera company, an offstage choir, and a ticket to the Opéra Garnier just to hear Thais change her mind. Violinists everywhere began playing Meditation from Thais as a standalone concert piece and an encore at the end of their recitals.

Built like a musical sandwich

One reason the piece works so well on its own is that I built it in a straightforward three-part form, like a very neat sandwich. You get the calm main melody first, then a middle section marked Poco più appassionato that builds to a dramatic peak with a little solo violin flourish, and finally the peaceful opening tune again. That simple shape lets a solo player show off both a warm, singing tone and a flash of fiery temperament in just a few minutes. Over the years, people have even arranged the solo part for flute, cello, and all sorts of other instruments that want a turn with the melody.

From nineteenth-century Paris to the ice rink

It makes me very proud that great violinists like Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, and Anne-Sophie Mutter have all recorded my little interlude. Still, I never imagined in 1893 that music about a fourth-century Egyptian desert conversion would one day accompany athletes on ice. When the Olympic figure skater Yuna Kim glided across the rink to my melody, she brought the piece to an audience far larger than the Opéra Garnier could ever hold. Not bad for a quiet scene change I wrote just to give my soprano a few minutes to catch her breath.