An artist without the slightest spark of genius? Your chance to judge as Gothic Opera revives Fromental Halévy's rarely performed La Dame de Pique

Fromental Halévy (1799-1862) was one of the mainstays of French opera in the 19th century. A pupil of Cherubini, his opera La Juive (1835) would inaugurate the new Paris Opera at the Palais Garnier in 1875. He wrote more than 30 operas for both the Opéra and Opéra-Comique in a wide variety of genres. Yet apart from La Juive, his works have not made it onto the operatic stage in the present day. I am not sure when La Juive was last performed in the UK, but we travelled to Antwerp to see it in 2019 [see my review].

Berlioz admired his scores, and Richard Wagner held up Halévy as an example for German composers to follow, "His vocation is to write music springing from the most intimate and powerful depths of human nature". But for Heinrich Heine, Halévy was an artist, but "without the slightest spark of genius".

As for his other operas apart from La Juive, well, you will be lucky to even encounter them on CD, though his grand opera La Reine de Chypre (1841) is available from Bru Zane, whilst La Tempesta (1850) was performed in Wexford in 2022 [see my review]. The good news for London-based opera lovers is that at the end of October, coinciding with Halloween, Gothic Opera will be performing Halévy's La Dame de pique (1850).

Based on Pushkin but with a libretto by the doyen of the French operatic stage, Eugène Scribe, La Dame de Pique premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1850 and ran for 47 performances. As might be expected, the plot has little to do with Pushkin, Scribe's libretto getting a mixed response, being described it as a hybrid of drama, comedy, opéra-comique, tragédie lyrique and féerie. Musically, the piece is accessible and seductive, and contains some exquisite vocal and instrumental writing, showcasing Halévy’s gift for melody, and contemporary critics praised the music's scale, vitality, and orchestral brilliance.

Gothic Opera's production will be directed by Jonny Danciger (who directed Strauss's Die Fledermaus for St Paul's Opera in 2024) and by staging the piece in the crumbling architecture of Battersea Arts Centre’s Grand Hall they will transport the audience to a time of decay and dissolution at the end of the Ancien Régime in France. Tussles of power are played out between the ruling and the working classes, like a card game being reshuffled. Leon Haxby, a composer who worked with the company on Donizetti's Maria di Rudenz, has created a new chamber orchestration of the opera for seven instruments. The opera will be conducted by Hannah von Wiehler, with designs by Celeste Langrée, and lighting by Luca Panetta.

Rather intriguingly the opera's settings range from aristocratic settings to subterranean mines, and Act 2 features a duet that erupts into a turbulent miners' chorus which some of Halévy's contemporaries thought to be the most remarkable piece in the score.

Interesting side note: In 1869, Halévy's daughter Geneviève married the composer Georges Bizet, who had been one of Halévy's pupils at the Conservatoire. After Bizet's death and an alliance with Élie-Miriam Delaborde, the son of the composer Charles-Valentin Alkan, Geneviève married a banker and became a leading Parisian salonnière. Amongst the guests at her soirées was the young Marcel Proust, who used her as one of the models for the Duchesse de Guermantes in In Search of Lost Time.

Gothic Opera in the Grand Hall, Battersea Arts Centre. Photo: Craig Fuller

Gothic Opera's production of Halévy's La Dame de Pique will be at Battersea Arts Centre's Grand Hall from 29 October to 1 November.

Full details from the company's website.