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The arrangement of incidents is so artistic that it seems inevitable; and no one is ever moved to wonder whether or not the tale might have been better told in different fashion. Nephew of the composer of "La Juive" an opera not now heard as often as it deserves, perhaps and son of a playwright no one of whose productions now survives, M. Halévy grew up in the theatre.

She's too effeminate, if she is so very aristocratic-not half so handsome as 'ma belle Juive. Oh! those dreamy eyes! They haunt me day and night. I believe I am sick with love!" "August 30.-This has been a memorable month to me. Last night, in the starlight, as I walked home with Leah from the Battery, she promised to marry me; yes, actually to marry me!

So it came about that La Juive is the only opera in which the grey-bearded old father is played by the principal tenor, whilst the lover is the light tenor. Mehul's Biblical Joseph and his Brethren is the one opera in which there are no female characters, though "Benjamin" is played by the leading soprano.

Halévy's music is characterised by dignity and sobriety, but it rarely rises to passion. He represents to a certain extent a reaction towards the pre-Rossinian school of opera, but, to be frank, most of 'La Juive' is exceedingly long-winded and dull. Besides his serious operas, Halévy wrote works of a lighter cast, which enjoyed popularity in their time.

Daae was offered the vacant place for the time. She received thunders of applause in the Juive. The viscount, who, of course, was present, was the only one to suffer on hearing the thousand echoes of this fresh triumph; for Christine still wore her plain gold ring. A distant voice whispered in the young man's ear: "She is wearing the ring again to-night; and you did not give it to her.

He wrote the words for Eleazar's fine air in "La Juive," and furnished the suggestions on which Meyerbeer remodeled the second and third acts of "Robert le Diable" and the last act of "Les Huguenots."

Viardot create a stronger feeling than when she appeared in Berlin in the spring of 1847 as Rachel in Halévy's "La Juive."

In the same way Halevy, the composer of La Juive, had to re-arrange and transpose his score, for Adolphe Nourrit, the great Paris tenor, in 1835, when the opera was first produced, was jealous of the splendid part the bass had been given, the tenor's role being quite insignificant.

On the contrary, he demands that his virtuosi, even the most famous of them, shall subordinate themselves to the lofty inspiration of his Muse. He attains this result by the simplicity and truth he knows how to stamp on dramatic melodies." This is what Richard Wagner said about La Juive in 1842.

The scene of 'La Juive' is laid in Constance, in the fifteenth century. Leopold, a Prince of the Empire, in the disguise of a young Israelite, has won the heart of Rachel, the daughter of the rich Jew Eleazar. When the latter discovers the true nationality of his prospective son-in-law he forbids him his house, but Rachel consents, like another Jessica, to fly with her lover.