Conducted by William J. Matthews
Frank Titterton (tenor)
Lalo's most successful opera was not performed until he was sixty-five. As has so often happened in the history of music, recognition came to him only after long and patient striving and considerable hardship. The opera was an immediate success, and won the prize of the French Academy. Not only that, but it reached its hundredth performance almost within a year of its production.
The story is of a mythical kingdom of Ys, of love and of warfare between two neighbouring kings, and at the end the King's daughter, to save her father's realm, gives herself to the sea as a sacrifice. The patron saint of Ys rises from the waves to receive her, and the waters go back from the land that they had threatened to overwhelm.