Finding no one there but the audience, she then searches the
gallery fruitlessly, and getting a sudden inspiration, she looks
behind her, and, to her immense astonishment, finds her lover
standing within a foot of her." This, as told with Levasseur's
inimitable drollery, was excruciatingly funny.
Robert is an expensive opera to put on, for, owing to hideous
jealousies at the Paris Opera, Meyerbeer was compelled to write
two prima-donna parts which afforded the rival ladies exactly
equal opportunities. 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. 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.
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