Le Prophète

As he put the finishing touches on the vocal score of Les Huguenots in May 1836 Meyerbeer was already anxious, as he told his wife, to begin work as soon as possible on a third grand opera ‘in order to plant my dramatic system … on indestructible pillars’. Initially Scribe proposed an opera dealing with the career of John of Leyden, the infamous Anabaptist leader of Münster, but eventually this idea was rejected, probably because of the unsuitability of the principal roles to the current company at the Opéra. Instead, in May 1837, Meyerbeer commissioned Scribe to write the libretto of an opera called L'Africaine, a sprawling romantic tale set in Spain and darkest Africa with an intervening act on the high seas. Meyerbeer may have started composing the music, but if so he came to an abrupt halt in the spring of 1838 after his friend Germain Delavigne warned him that the libretto was fatally flawed. His confidence badly shaken, the composer laid L'Africaine aside and in August signed a contract with Scribe for Le Prophète. Scribe's principal source was a passage in Voltaire's Essai sur les mæurs, recounting how in 1534 John (Jean) of Leyden (1509–36) established himself in grand style as prophet-king of Münster, espoused communism and polygamy, and withstood the attacks of his enemies until finally betrayed by his confederates. Around these bare facts the librettist wove an imaginary intrigue involving Jean's fiancée (Berthe), his mother (Fidès), three Anabaptist leaders who lead him astray (Zacharie, Jonas and Mathisen), and a lecherous nobleman who abducts Berthe (Oberthal). Laid out in four acts in deference to a short-lived fear that the Parisian public had tired of five-act operas, the libretto was soon rearranged in five acts, following the original plan of 1836.