 Complete the following phrase:  In his Memoirs, which were compiled in 1911 near the end of his life, Massenet ascribes the creation of the role of Esclarmonde to a chance meeting with Sibyl Sanderson sometime in the spring of 1887. He recounts how he was astonished by the range and capacity of her voice, realizing at once that she was the perfect choice for the heroine of his new opera, which he had begun to compose at the end of 1886. It is almost certain, however, that he had received the libretto to Esclarmonde much earlier than that, and the meeting with Sybil Sanderson served rather as an additional catalyst  a stimulus to complete the opera. The work was commissioned as a spectacular event to open the 