Jean VEBER (1868-1928): Thaïs and Athanaël. Black pencil, wa - Lot 68

Jean VEBER (1868-1928): Thaïs and Athanaël. Black pencil, wash, gouache and gold highlights, titled at the top. Height 16.5 - Width 21.5 cm. An opera by Jules Massenet based on the novel by Anatole France, Thaïs premiered at the Paris Opéra on March 16, 1894. The action takes place in Alexandria in the 4th century. Athanaël, a cenobite monk, seeks to convert Thaïs, a famous courtesan and pagan priestess devoted to the goddess Venus, to Christianity. He succeeds, but Thaïs chooses to withdraw from the world and live cloistered in a convent, before dying there. Athanaël discovers too late that his obsession with Thaïs was tinged with carnal love, and, while Thaïs dies in the joy of redemption, he denies his faith, despairing of his own salvation, unlike Thaïs. Drawing for the lithographic project used to illustrate the frontispiece of the score published by Heugel et Cie in 1894.