(Radio abridgement - Complete as performed by French Radio)
Alfred Roller, The Courtisan (1900)
Thaïs
.....................................................
Elen Dosia
Athanaël
............................................. Paul
Cabanel
Nicias .................................................
Georges Noré
Palémont
.......................................... André
Philippe
Crobyle .......................... .... Huguette Saint-Arnaud
Myrtale .......................................... Madeleine Druot
Albine
.................................... Gilberte Alves-Bernay
Orchestre Radio-Lyrique de la Radiodiffusion Nationale
Conductor ..................... Jules Gressier
French Radio, June 13, 1944
Who was Thais?
There are two more-or-less historical courtesans with the name of Thais.
The earlier was a Greek, Alexander the Great's companion, who accompanied him
on his asiatic expedition and is remembered for having prompted the firing of
Persepolis. You can meet her, musically, in Handel's Alexander's feast.
Massenet's Thais was an Egyptian, first mentioned in a seventh-century
Syriac compilation. She was a famous courtesan who was converted into
christianity and lived her later life humble and secluded. She passed through
Greek and Latin monastic manuscripts, and in the tenth century reached Germany,
where her conversionwas made the subject of a drama by the Benedictine nun
Hroswitha.
Anatole France's biographer, Edwin Preston Dargan, says, without citing any
sources, that in 1899, in a necropolis at Antinoe there was discovered the
mummy of a woman named Thais, surrounded by sacred objects, and near her the
mummy of one Sarapion, which is the name given in the earliest sources to her
converter (He is renamed Paphnutius only in late Latin sources, and Athanaël
only in the opera).
This was another wartime performance, broadcast at the unlikely hour of
2:00 AM. The reason is that Paris at the time was subjected to electric power
cuts several times a day. Late in the night they were less frequent.
Complete Libretto