This arrangement for violin and piano of the famous Méditation from Massenet's opera Thaïs from
Edition Peters contains separate violin and piano parts and has been arranged and edited by
Roger Nichols. One of the world's foremost authorities on the music of France Roger Nichols
has published and broadcast extensively on the music of composers such as Ravel Satie Debussy
Chabrier and Berlioz. In 2006 he was appointed chevalier de la Légion d'honneur for his
services to French music. Thaïs Massenet's tenth completed opera had its première at the
Paris Opéra on 16 March 1894 with the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson in the title role. The
libretto by Louis Gallet was based on Anatole France's novel of the same name serialized in
the Revue des deux mondes in 1889 and published in book form the following year. The story
tells of the conversion to Christianity of the courtesan Thaïs by the holy man Athanael and
his parallel but opposite conversion to a life dominated by lust for her. The Méditation for
solo violin and orchestra joining the two scenes of Act II describes the beginning of Thaïs's
conversion. The work was not received well initially by 1897 when Sanderson retired it had
reached only its fourteenth performance. But the Méditation was an instant success with
violinists and its religious association also encouraged church organists to play it at Mass
during the Communion. Even Pope Pius X's motu proprio of 1903 specifically demanding that the
music heard in church should not include reminiscences of those employed in the opera house
could not prevail against it.
