‘Les Huguenots’ shows Meyerbeer at his best Even Wagner, his bitterest enemy, admitted the dramatic power of the great duet in the fourth act, and several other scenes are scarcely inferior to it in sustained inspiration.  The opera is marred as a whole by Meyerbeer’s invincible self-consciousness.  He seldom had the courage to give his genius full play.  He never lost sight of his audience, and wrote what he thought would be effective rather than what he knew was right.  Thus his finest moments are marred by lapses from sincerity into the commonplace conventionality of the day.  Yet the dignity and power of ‘Les Huguenots’ are undeniable, and it is unfortunate that its excessive length should prevent it from ever being heard in its entirety.

In ‘Le Prophete’ Meyerbeer chose a subject which, if less rich in dramatic possibility than that of ‘Les Huguenots,’ has a far deeper psychological interest.  Unfortunately, Scribe, with all his cleverness, was quite the worst man in the world to deal with the story of John of Leyden.  In the libretto which he constructed for Meyerbeer’s benefit the psychological interest is conspicuous only by its absence, and the character of the young leader of the Anabaptists is degraded to the level of the merest puppet.  John, an innkeeper of Leyden, loves Bertha, a village maiden who dwells near Dordrecht.  Unfortunately, her liege lord, the Count of Oberthal, has designs upon the girl himself, and refuses his consent to the marriage.  Bertha escapes from his clutches and flies to the protection of her lover, but Oberthal secures the person of Fides, John’s old mother, and by threats of putting her to death, compels him to give up Bertha.  Wild with rage against the vice and lawlessness of the nobles, John joins the ranks of the Anabaptists, a revolutionary sect pledged to the destruction of the powers that be.  Their leaders recognise him as a prophet promised by Heaven, and he is installed as their chief.  The Anabaptists lay siege to Munster, which falls into their hands, and in the cathedral John is solemnly proclaimed the Son of God.  During the ceremony he is recognised by Fides, who, believing him to have been slain by the false prophet, has followed the army to Munster in hopes of revenge.  She rushes forward to claim her son, but John pretends not to know her.  To admit an earthly relationship would be to prejudice his position with the populace, and he compels her to confess that she is mistaken.  The coronation ends with John’s triumph, while the hapless Fides is carried off to be immured in a dungeon.  John visits her in her cell, and obtains her pardon by promising to renounce his deceitful splendour and to fly with her.  Later he discovers that a plot against himself has been hatched by some of the Anabaptist leaders, and he destroys himself and them by blowing up the palace of Munster.  Meyerbeer’s music, fine as much of it is, suffers chiefly from the character of the libretto.  The latter is merely a string of conventionally effective