Halévy: La Reine de Chypre ***
Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, 7th June 2017
The only opera you’re ever likely to encounter by Fromental Halévy is La Juive, which probably qualifies the composer as a “one hit wonder”. But Halévy wrote around 40 operas, of which La Reine de Chypre (The Queen of Cyprus), premiered at the Salle Le Peletier in 1841, comes about halway. Richard Wagner, reviewing for the Dresden Abend-Zeitung, praised Halévy’s score as “noble, feeling and even new and elevating”, concluding that La Reine de Chypre was “decidedly the best that has appeared on the Opéra’s boards since Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots”.
© Gaëlle Astier-Perret
Read the full review on Bachtrack.