On 29 February 1836, Les Huguenots, a grand opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864), with words by Eugène Scribe (1791–1861) and Émile Deschamps (1791–18

But these operas are far more than imitations: they show an apprehension of convention and genre that is nothing less than a dismantling of accepted formulas, a

This is not a history book but a long fictional account of the lives and loves of the Huguenots. The story begins in seventeenth-century France in a hilltop tow