It appears to be sheer coincidence that this decadent French late 19th-century operatic rarity was programmed this year into Opera Australia’s season for a recent concert performance in the Sydney Town Hall during its absence from the Sydney Opera House and again in concert performance as the Mid-Season Gala for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, both with entirely separate casts.

The simple story of this exotic bijou is well related here, in essence a tale of two protagonists who begin on two diametrically opposed paths, one of religious redemption and the other towards unfettered hedonism but who end up exchanging their destinies. The opera’s first performance took place at the Paris Opéra in 1894 at the peak of Massenet’s fame. The work was written for the extraordinary Sibyl Sanderson, a Californian soprano who allegedly had a range of low G to three octaves above. The work was well received, particularly for its show-stopping Méditation for solo violin that returns in the final Act as part of a vocal duet. Its non-rhyming prose libretto by Louis Gallet is based on Anatole France’s novel Thaïs (1890). The work is a precursor to Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and throughout this...