The idea of reconciling this taste, founded on strict truth, with the seductive charm of the Italian forms, to which the French were beginning to be sensible, suggested to Cherubini a system of lyric drama capable of satisfying both.  Wagner himself even says, in his “Tendencies and Theories,” speaking of Cherubini and his great co-laborers Mehul and Spontini:  “It would be difficult to answer them, if they now perchance came among us and asked in what respect we had improved on their mode of musical procedure.”

“Lodoiska,” which cast the old Italian operas into permanent oblivion, and laid the foundation of the modern French dramatic school in music, has a libretto similar to that of “Fidelio” and Gretry’s “Coeur de Lion” combined, and was taken from a romance of Faiblas by Fillette Loraux.  The critics found only one objection:  the music was all so beautiful that no breathing time was granted the listener.  In one year the opera was performed two hundred times, and at short intervals two hundred more representations took place.

The Revolution culminated in the crisis of 1793, which sent the King to the scaffold.  Cherubini found a retreat at La Chartreuse, near Rouen, the country seat of his friend, the architect Louis.  Here he lived in tranquillity, and composed several minor pieces and a three-act opera, never produced, but afterward worked over into “Ali Baba” and “Faniska.”  In his Norman retreat Cherubini heard of the death of his father, and while suffering under this infliction, just before his return to Paris in 1794, he composed the opera of “Elisa.”  This work wras received with much favor at the Feydeau theatre, though it did not arouse the admiration called out by “Lodoiska.”

In 1795 the Paris Conservatory was founded, and Cherubini appointed one of the five inspectors, as well as professor of counterpoint, his associates being Lesueur, Gretry, Gossec, and Mehul.  The same year also saw him united to Cecile Tourette, to whom he had been so long and devotedly attached.  Absorbed in his duties at the Conservatory he did not come before the public again till 1797, when the great tragic masterpiece of “Medee” was produced at the Feydeau theatre.  “Lodoiska” had been somewhat gay; “Elisa,” a work of graver import, followed; but in “Medee” was attained the profound tragic power of Gluck and Beethoven.  Hoffman’s libretto was indeed unworthy of the great music, but this has not prevented its recognition by musicians as one of the noblest operas ever written.  It has probably been one of the causes, however, why it is so rarely represented at the present time, its overture alone being well known to modern musical audiences.  This opera has been compared by critics to Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” as being a great expression of anguish and despair in their more stormy phases.  Chorley tells us that, when he first saw it, he was irresistibly reminded of the lines in Barry Cornwall’s poem to Pasta: 

     “Now thou art like some winged thing that cries
     Above some city, flaming fast to death.”