Influence
Following five years after Meyebeer's own Robert le diable and a year after Fromental Halévy's La Juive, Les Huguenots consolidated the genre of Grand Opera, in which the Paris Opéra would specialise for the next generation, and which became a major box-office attraction for opera houses all over the world.
Hector Berlioz's contemporary account is full of praise: with 'Meyerbeer in command at the first desk from beginning to end I found superb in its beauty and refinement The richness of texture in the Pré-aux-Clercs scene was extraordinary, yet the ear could follow it with such ease that every strand in the composer's complex thought was continually apparent - a marvel of dramatic counterpoint'.
The immense success of the opera encouraged many musicians, including Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg, to create virtuosic piano works based on its themes.
A military slow march based on the prelude to Les Huguenots is played every year during the ceremony of Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards Parade in London.
Read more about this topic: Les Huguenots
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Just what is the civil law? What neither influence can affect, nor power break, nor money corrupt: were it to be suppressed or even merely ignored or inadequately observed, no one would feel safe about anything, whether his own possessions, the inheritance he expects from his father, or the bequests he makes to his children.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its current, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later occasions.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)