Victor Hugo's volume Les Orientales, had already inspired Berlioz to one of his most ravishing and popular masterpieces, the mélodie La Captive in February 1832. In October of the following year he married his idol and femme inspiratrice, Irish actress Harriet Smithson, and August 14, 1834, a son, Louis, was born to them. He managed to complete his second symphony, Harold en Italie, by June 22 and had begun the comic opera Benvenuto Cellini, though in the face of his changed circumstances he took on the grind of regular journalism, which slowed composition but provided steady income. In preparation for fall concerts, during that frantic summer he orchestrated La Belle voyageuse, Le Jeune Pâtre breton, and La Captive, the latter bringing him back within the orbit of Les Orientales, from which he set Sara la baigneuse for male quartet and orchestra with a nervously rippled radiance. Sara and La Captive are sisters beneath the skin-indolent, day-dreaming girls at leisure in a torrid clime and exotic milieus. Sara was heard for the first time on November 9, 1834, at the Salle du Conservatoire with the overture Le Roi Lear, and the orchestral version of La Belle Voyageuse. The curious omission of a named baritone in the program has led several of Berlioz's biographers to guess that the composer himself took the part. Berlioz's friend, Narcisse Girard, led the orchestra—Berlioz began conducting his own concerts only in the following year. Unfortunately, this initial version of Sara was never published and is now lost, as is a succeeding version, probably made in early 1838, for soprano, two tenors, bass—quatuor madrigalesque—and orchestra. Dating of the definitive version, for three choruses and orchestra, is uncertain, though it was very likely completed prior to November 1849 and published by Richault in 1851, with a dedication to Berlioz's friend, Hippolyte Lecourt, an attorney and musical amateur from Marseilles. It was first heard October 22, 1850, in the Salle Ste.-Cécile at the first concert of the second season of the short-lived Societé Philharmonique, of which Berlioz was musical director, with the composer conducting. In this version, Sara's spirited musings are sensuously couched in choral and orchestral fullness, richly varied from stanza to stanza, touched with exquisite color, and animated with piquant detail. An arrangement for soprano and contralto (or tenor, or soprano and bass) with piano accompaniment, made under Berlioz's direction by Auguste Morel, preserves much of the setting's effectiveness, charm, and scintillant interplay of parts—Berlioz included it in his 1863 Collection de 32 Mélodies.

© Adrian Corleonis, All Music Guide