ON DECEMBER 9, 1874, an audience gathered at the Lyceum Theatre in New York City to witness the first English-language performance in the United States of Hervé's (1825–1892) opéra bouffe, Chilperic (1868). The opera first had been staged in New York five years earlier in its original French at the Théâtre Française. While historical exactitude probably should not have been expected from a work that begins with a druid chorus, Hervé's opera offered New York audiences a comical look at the marital travails of King Chilperic I. Originally recounted with no small amount of disdain by Gregory of Tours in the Decem libri historiarum, and later with dramatic flair by Augustin Thierry in his Recits, the machinations of Queen Fredegund at the expense of Chilperic's first wife, Galswinth, provided Hervé with more than sufficient (if surprisingly tragic) plot around which to weave his comedy.

In Hervé's version, Chilperic meets the shepherdess Fredegund while searching for the aforementioned druids in the forest, when both already are engaged to be married to others. Chilperic's brother Sigibert and sister-in-law Brunhild, not surprisingly, think very little of Chilperic's obvious romantic interest in the young peasant woman: “Never, never, I declare/Was such a stupid being seen,/to fall in love with the first he meets,/It clearly shows he's pretty green.” Chilperic does follow through with his marriage to Galswinth (whom he insists in the English translation on referring to as “Mrs. C”), however, enraging Fredegund, who in the meantime has returned with Chilperic to the palace. Her plan to have her rival disposed of is foiled, however (in all of five minutes, as Chilperic brags) and everyone improbably shares a (relatively) happy ending. In the space of three short acts bloody dynastic politics have been transformed into light musical comedy.

The opera was, by most measures, an international success, and the 1874 production was performed throughout the United States, including tour stops in Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, and Galveston. Not all American reviewers were impressed by the opera, however. One reviewer, for instance, dismissed the anglicized version as “tame, disjointed, and incoherent…A chorus of Druids in the opening scene that sounds like a gloomy reminiscence of ‘Norma’ seems to cast a shadow over the fun and frolic which the wit fails to dispel.”