Conspicuous Silence: Heine’s Response to Halévy’s »La Juive«

Zusammenfassung

It is likely, though not certain, that Heinrich Heine attended the premier of Fromental Halévy’s opera, »La Juive«, at the Paris Opéra on February 23, 1835.¹ As the major, new grand opéra of the season the work was feverishly anticipated by the Parisian public and the subject of intense speculation in the press.² The composer, who had won the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1819 and been appointed chef de chant at the Académie royal de musique in 1827, had had only modest success at the Opéra-Comique but seemed poised to make a breakthrough at the Opéra, indeed to challenge the current supremacy of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who was known to be working on his own grand opera, »Les Huguenots«, that would have its delayed premier the following season. Halévey’s collaborator on »La Juive« was none other than Eugène Scribe, the most prolific and best known librettist of the period. Scribe had collaborated with Meyerbeer on the sensation of the 1831 opera season, »Robert le Diable«, and had actually approached Meyerbeer first about composing the new work.³ Contributing to the expectancy surrounding the premier of »La Juive« was knowledge of its subject matter: the stark confrontation of Christian and Jewish faith at the Council of Constance in 1414 and the martyrdom of Scribe’s heroine, the Jewess Rachel, in an auto-da-fé in the final act. With its portrayal of religious ceremony and the appearance of Catholic clergy on stage, the recently reinstituted Commission de Surveillance was looking closely at anti-clerical and anti-authoritarian elements in »La Juive«.⁴