La Juive

La Juive (occasionally called The Cardinal’s Daughter) by Jacques Fromental Halévy earned the composer international recognition and perpetuated his name in the operatic world. Despite being undeservedly banished from European stages in the aftermath of the Second World War, it has captivated the audiences ever since with its fabulous melodies, sumptuous staging and the universal themes of love and hatred, hope and desperation. When Augustin Eugene Scribe, a prominent French dramatist of the time, first presented Halévy with the concept, story and characters of the future opera, the composer was moved to the bottom of his soul. For Scribe, all political and historical perplexities of the Jewish nation served merely as a captivating foil for a drama of love. 

 

Although Halévy wrote an impressive array of stage works (including 36 operas), none of them equaled the success of La Juive. It was the grandest spectacle of all 19th‐century grand operas offered at Paris Opéra, with massed choral and classical ballet scenes, a breathtaking procession in Act 1, ravishing festivities of Act 3, and a tragic climax in Act 5. Today the opera is usually performed with cuts, retaining all the magnitude through an enormous cast employed.

 

The story features Cardinal de Brogni who loses in a fire his newly‐born daughter (who ultimately appears to have survived being saved and adopted by a Jewish goldsmith) and love between a young Jewess (who turns out to be not Jewish, but the long‐lost daughter of the Cardinal) and a young Christian (who on top of being Christian is married to an Emperor’s daughter) – love that is doomed from the beginning and void of any promise for happiness.