French Composer Florent Schmitt’s Romance with the Orient

“The music is vigorous, colorful, and imbued with a slightly fierce sadness which is perhaps the most personal characteristic of the author … a feeling that, rightly or wrongly, we take to be oriental and even Semitic.” — Music critic Louis Laloy, writing about the 1920 premiere of Florent Schmitt’s Antoine et Cléopâtre. When one […]