Three hundred hidden musicians, divided into wind and chord orchestras, accompany a chorus of two hundred executants, and furnish the music for a ballet of seventy dancers.
As the third stroke dies away, the Muse, Mademoiselle Rabuteau, enters and declaims the salutation addressed by Louis Gallet to the City of Beziers. At its conclusion the tragedy begins.
This is not the place to describe or criticise at length so new an attempt at classic restoration. The author follows the admirable fable of antiquity with a directness and simplicity worthy of his Greek model. The story of Dejanira and Hercules is too familiar to be repeated here. The hero's infidelity and the passion of a neglected woman are related through five acts logically and forcibly, with the noble music of Saint-Saens as a background.
We watch the growing affection of the demi-god for the gentle Iole. We sympathize with jealous, desperate Dejanira when in a last attempt to gain back the love of Hercules she persuades the unsuspecting Iole to offer him a tunic steeped in Nessus's blood, which Dejanira has been told by Centaur will when warmed in the sun restore the wearer to her arms.
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