In that odd corner of the repertory reserved for acknowledged
masterpieces that seldom, if ever, get their due, pride of place is
reserved for Claude Debussy’s Le martyre de Saint Sébastien. In the
more than eight decades since the work’s Paris debut, Le martyre has
been vilified, bowdlerized, and, most frequently, plain ignored.
Like an ugly stepchild, the work is difficult to love. For starters,
the score was originally intended to accompany an outré five-hour
drama by Gabriele d’Annunzio, the Italian writer who, along with
Oscar Wilde, attempted to turn decadence into high art during the
last fin-de-siècle. D’Annunzio’s “mystery play” tells the story of
St. Sebastian and metaphorically highlights the tensions between
Christianity and paganism. Censured by clerics, secular critics,
and the public at large following its premiere, the initial
production, which opened at the Théâtre du Châtelet on May 22, 1911,
was not without some merit. The choreography was by Michel
Fokine—the great Russian-born innovator—the ornate sets and
costumes by the gifted Léon Bakst. But
it was in casting the title role that d’Annunzio proved especially
perverse; he chose the dancer Ida Rubinstein, a Jew and a woman, to
play the soldier-saint.
By selecting Debussy to pen a score for this work, the
playwright secured Le martyre’s immortality. Though d’Annunzio
couldn’t have realized it at the time, his choice helped to create one
of music’s most intriguing oddities. (Richard Strauss’s Enoch Arden
and Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsawcan also be placed