Debussy composed The Prodigal Son (L’enfantprodigue) at the age of 21. The cantata was his third, this time successful, attempt at winning the Prix de Rome as a student of the Conservatoire in Paris. With the prestigious scholarship he would spend two years at the French Academy in the Villa Medici in Rome. Composed in 1884, re-worked and almost entirely re-orchestrated in 1907/1908, the work has the subtitle sc?ne lyrique or ‘lyrical scene’which refers to the well-known Biblical story, rendered by the librettist Édouard Guinard. The three soloists are Aza?l (tenor), his mother, Lia (soprano) and his father, Simeon (baritone). ‘Very marked poetic sense, brilliant and warm colouring, animated and dramatic music’, the jury of theAcadémie des Beaux-Arts judged. The music of The Prodigal Son melds numerous influences, including the styles of Cézar Frank, Massenet, Wagner and Borodin. The ‘exotic’ melody and harmony, as well as the use of cymbals and tambourine, were probably inspired by Delibes’s Lakmé, premi?red just a year before. The work is bound together by a few recurrent ‘Leitmotifs’, such as the heart-warming horn melody in the middle section of the overture which symbolises maternal love, or Aza?l’s three-note ‘signature’ which Lia sings first when the name of her son is mentioned.