HUGUENOTS, LES

Composer: GIACOMO MEYER BEER Book by Euc=NE ScriBe and Em1Le DES CHAMPS First performance: Opéra, Paris, February 29, 1836 5 acts. RAOUL DE NANGIS, popular Huguenot, is requested by Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, to come blindfolded to meet the woman she wishes him to marry, Valentine. This beautiful young lady is one Raoul had fallen in love with years before and earlier in this same evening had seen with her afhanced, De Nevers, a man from whom she was trying to escape. When the Queen reveals Valentine, Raoul a umes the meeting he chanced to see with De Nevers was an a ignation, and cries that he wouldn’t think of marrying Valentine. Marguerite later prevents open warfare between the Huguenots and Catholics over this slight. Raoul, still in love with Valentine, watches her step aboard the wedding barge De Nevers has provided. He appears in her room later, and learns the truth as someone enters. Hiding behind a curtain he overhears the whole plan for the St. Bartholomew’s Day ma acre. When he enierges, Raoul and Valentine sing a pa ionate love song. In the Italian version it is at this point that they are shot down from offstage and the opera ends. In the fifth act ending, Valentine and Raoul, both Huguenots now, are shot by her father’s soldiers not before they have been married, however. III. Synopses of Operas (Stories of the Operas) — I i