Louis-Etienne Ernest Reyer 1823- 1909

[adriano]

Reyer's Opera "Salammbô" is another excellent work!
There is a broadcast of a Marseille performance of September 2008, conducted by Lawrence Foster.

Orson Welles originally wanted an aria from this work to be used in his film "Citizen Kane" - but it was decided to create a new piece in the style of French post-Romantic opera - instead of recurring to the original score. Bernard Herrmann supplied a wonderful and gorgeously orchestrated piece! In the film, the singer (Kane's wife) sings dreadfully. The aria was then performed "correctly" by Eileen Farrell in a CBS 1943 broadcast and recorded  in 1974 by Kiri Te Kanawa. It's on that famous RCA LP (later re-issued on CD) "The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Herrmann", conducted by Charles Gerhardt and produced by George Korngold (the composer's son). As a text, Herrmann used a pastiche from the classic tragedies of Racine.
As far as I remember we already have an earlier thread on this composer and on this subject in here!

Of "Sigurd" I suppose you know that there is that excellent and famous performance conducted by Manuel Rosenthal (French Radio, 1973, published on various bootleg LPs and CDs) - plus a Geneva concert performance of 2013, a broadcast which I may have offered in here years ago.

[Ebubu]

"but it was decided to create a new piece in the style of French post-Romantic opera - instead of recurring to the original score. Bernard Herrmann supplied a wonderful and gorgeously orchestrated piece!"
Which sounds furiously like a Massenet piece !

"and recorded  in 1974 by Kiri Te Kanawa."
Here's another gorgeous version by Venera Gimadieva at the Prom's :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwFtHTZnbF0