Beset by criticisms of Wagnerisme, Édouard Lalo cried off opera after Le Roi d’Ys but the work itself held the stage and is finally returning to London

Poster for the première performance of Édouard Lalo’s Le roi d’Ys.

During the 19th century, many French composers became fascinated by Wagner and his operas. Not every composer managed as balanced an attitude as Gabriel Fauré and André Messager. After their visit to Bayreuth, they produced Les Souvenirs de Bayreuth, a series of quadrilles based on Wagnerian themes for piano duet, a piece which remains a nerdy delight for Wagner enthusiasts.

Other composers were influenced both by Wagner’s techniques and his choice of subject matter. Composers attempted to bring Wagnerian sweep to French lyric drama with mixed success, resulting in a clutch of works based on myth, legend or simply set in Anglos Saxon or Viking times that are interesting but never quite take off.  Only occasionally do works rise above this, and even then the late romantic French opera style has fallen out of fashion during the 20th century, making formerly popular works into rarities.

Chausson’s Le Roi Arthus is based on the Arthurian legend was written in the late 1880s and early 1890s but not performed until 1903 and it never took flight properly. The opera was inspired both by Wagner and by Chausson’s teacher Franck’s opera, Hulda, this time set in 11th century Norway. Hulda was performed in the 1890s but again, never had great success. Chabrier, despite being known nowadays for his music in lighter style, repeatedly tried to succeed in Wagnerian opera. Gwendoline, set in eighth century Britain, was performed in Brussels, Paris and elsewhere, but then lay forgotten. During his final illness he struggled to continue work on Briséïs, set in Corinth during the reign of Emperor Hadrian.  Too often, the librettos for these operas leave rather a lot to be desired, pianist Graham Johnson described Catulle Mendès libretto for Chabrier’s Gwendoline as catastrophic!

Some successful composers managed to copy Wagner without emulating. Ernest Reyer was a moderately successful opera composer and for his fifth opera, Sigurd he turned to the Scandinavian legends of the Edda Völsunga saga (Nibelungenlied), the same source which Richard Wagner drew upon for the libretto for his Ring cycle. However, Reyer’s sound world is not that of Wagner, but much closer to Berlioz who was something of a mentor to the young composer.

Critics, however, were less than enamoured of this trend and complaints of being too Wagnerian were levelled at composers including Bizet for Carmen, unlikely though it seems nowadays. This was a criticism also levelled at Édouard Lalo’s opera Le Roi d’Ys, despite its popularity with audiences.

The composer Édouard Lalo married a contralto from Brittany, Julie Besnier de Maligny, in 1865 and this seems to have been one of the impetuses for an operatic project. Based on the Breton legend of Ys, Lalo’s opera Le Roi d’Ys is his most complex and ambitious creation, with the role of Margared was originally written for his wife.

The legend of Ys, a mythical city on the coast of Brittany that was swallowed up by the sea, is the same on that inspired Claude Debussy’s La cathédrale engloutie. 

Initially, Lalo struggled to get the work performed, it was rejected by Parisian theatres in the 1870s, but after revisions it premiered in 1888 at the Opera Comique. Within a year of its premiere, Le roi d’Ys had reached its 100th performance there and by 1940 had reached 490 performances there. Perhaps part of the success of the opera might be down to its libretto which is by an experienced librettist, Édouard Blau who wrote operas for Bizet, Offenbach and Massenet (Le Cid and Werther).

Despite this eventual popularity, the work initially incurred criticism for being “too progressive” and “Wagnerian” and this put Lalo off writing any more for the stage and he concentrated on chamber music and orchestral works.

The post-War history of Lalo’s opera is rather more patchy, though there have been influential stagings in France including in Toulouse in 2007.  On Sunday 30 March 2025, Chelsea Opera Group are giving us a rare opportunity to hear Lalo’s Le Roi d’Ys at Cadogan Hall, when Paul Wingfield conducts with a cast including Thomas D Hopkinson, Hye-Youn Lee, Maria Schellenberg, Alexei Gusev, and Luis Gomes.

Full details from the Chelsea Opera Group website.