Commissioned by the state, Suzanne Giraud¹s new opera, Le Vase de Parfums, is to be performed at various theaters across France, [...] The curtain rises on the orchestra stacked toward heaven, with a character called ³La femme libre² tending to her dying sister. Later, an angel reveals ³La femme libre² to be Mary Madeleine (Mary Magdalen) and her dying sister to be Martha.

The opening of the opera was spectacular, with violinists positioned throughout the eighteenth-century theater, one of the most beautiful in France, immediately plunging the audience into the composer¹s densely chromatic tonal landscape. [...] However Giraud also had feminist goals in setting Mary¹s words, noting that ³Christianity has largely ignored the words of women. I wanted to restore the words of this woman, symbol of love, including its sensual aspects.² In the course of the work, we see Mary being challenged in her beliefs by the diabolical ³L¹homme du siècle,² who in the best scene of the opera shows the desperation of a beggar, whose pathetic singing is a song of misery and not the divine music of which Mary speaks. Her themes of love and beauty, represented by her flask of perfume, are affirmed and explored in a musical monody, which owes something to the composer¹s French twentieth-century musical background but also takes on board the recitative of the Italian Renaissance, with particularly grateful and expressive vocal lines. [...] Still, the local audience applauded enthusiastically, and many stayed on for a question-and-answer session with the composer and the interpreters.
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