Composer, scholar of ancient Greek art and professor at the Paris Conservatoire from 1909 to 1936, during the 1880s Maurice Emmanuel studied with Leo Delibes, Theodore Dubois, and Ernest Guiraud. The first time he received recognition, however, was for his groundbreaking doctoral thesis, La Danse Grecque antique, which he defended at the Sorbonne in 1896. A composer of many musicological works at the beginning of the '40th century, Emmanuel was recognized as an outstanding musician by Paul Dukas, Ferruccio Busoni, Olivier Messiaen and Henri Dutilleux. Beginning in 1895 Emmanuel composed the first version of his opera Promethee enchafni, which was completed in 1898. Of this five-act Promithee only three sheets survive, in the Museum-Library of the Paris Opera, as Emmanuel destroyed the manuscript. Between 1916 and 1918, Emmanuel composed a 'lyrical tragedy' which he then presented to Camille Chevillard and Gabriel Pierne in the winter of 1918-1919, as the two maestros were at the time sharing the musical direction of the Lamoureux-Colonne orchestra. The premiere of the first act took place on the '43rd March 1919, performed by the Lamoureux-Colonne orchestra, under the direction of Chevillard, with the famous tenor Leon Laffitte in the role of Prometheus, Promethee would never be performed in its entirety during the composer's lifetime. It was not until 1959 that the three acts of the lyrical tragedy were performed in concert at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees. The family archives of the Association Maurice Emmanuel kept a complete recording on magnetic tapes of this historic evening. More than fifty years later, Melism Records decided to publish it, in a superb edition including the original French translation, done by Maurice Emmanuel himself, from Aeschylus tragedy.
