SAMSON ET DALILA – SAINT-SAËNS
Presented on Dec 6, 8, 10, 15 at the Gaiety Theatre Dublin by soloists from The Bucharest Opera as part of the Dublin Grand Opera Society’s Winter Season
Ion Buzea – Samson
Zenaida Pally – Dalila
Joseph Dalton – Abimélech
David Ohanesian – High Priest
Nicolae Florei – Old Hebrew
Napoleone Annovazzi – Conductor
Augusto Cardi – Producer
The production that is most vividly remembered is “Samson and Delilah” with the Romanian principals Zenaida Pally and Ion Buzea. Pally, with her dark, seductive Mediterranean appearance, looked perfect for the role of Delilah, while Buzea was a colossus of a man, a real-life Samson, or as one newspaper put it, ‘a great hunk of a man.’ He was already a big name in European opera houses and was soon to confirm his reputation in Dublin. The critics were bowled over. ‘From this performance of the opera,’ noted Charles Acton in the Irish Times, ‘it would seem that the DGOS struck oil when they went behind the Iron Curtain. The protagonists in last night’s opera were the best I have heard in Dublin for many a long day.’ Chorus members ‘raved’ about the performance. Maura Mooney told me it was the best “Samson” she had seen and that Pally and Buzea played the big love scene in act two as if they were real lovers. Florrie Draper felt that Pally was the most sexy Delilah she had ever seen and Buzea a kind of Valentino of the opera. ‘Sparks flew alright,’ she mused. ‘But isn’t that what the opera is all about anyway?’ Aileen Walsh thought the whole production was exciting and the singing exceptional. You either play “Samson and Delilah” with passion or you lose, she said, and in this case Pally and Buzea gave it everything. Maureen Lemass told me she would never forget the first night’s performance. ‘I do recall that Ion Buzea was stunning as Samson in both his acting and singing. What a stage presence! He and Pally were so credible that you believed they were right out of the Bible.’
(Extracted from “Love and Music: The Glorious History of the Dublin Grand Opera Society” by Gus Smith, 1998)
Opera in Ireland 