page_title: Polyphème
section_title: Composition
hierarchical_section_title: Polyphème / Content / Composition
caption_attribution_description: Jean Cras (1879-1932, French composer), at sea with his cat, Bleu-Nial
context_page_description: Polyphème is an opera composed by Jean Cras with a libretto by Albert Samain. It was written by Cras during World War I and was premiered in Paris in 1922, giving Cras a burst of notoriety in the French press.
context_section_description: Cras encountered Samain's dramatic poem in 1910, ten years after its author's death. He adapted it by dividing it into four rather than the original two acts and slightly pruned the longer speeches. He described the work as a "lyric tragedy" rather than an opera, since there is very little action. The drama proceeds through a series of arcadian pastoral tableaus punctuated by Polyphème's long brooding soliloquies and his obsessive interrogations of Galatée's young brother Lycas.
  Cras completed the music in 1914, working on the orchestration while serving in the French navy during the Adriatic campaign of World War I. The music is impressionistic, restless, and highly chromatic, in the spirit of Chausson and Duparc. Polyphème's depression is marked by the use of diminished seventh chords and tortuous figures. The influence of Debussy's La Mer and his opera Pelléas et Mélisande is also noticeable, especially in the use of whole tone scales.
caption: Jean Cras
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