Here is another monument to the fascinating and questionable genre of French grand opera: Fromental Halévy's La Juive (1835). La Juive was Halévy's first great success, with its colossal spectacle and final execution scene, the stuff of operatic legend.

Beneath its sumptuous stage finery, La Juive speaks of religious intolerance, imperialism and the tragedy of medieval Jewish life in Europe threatened by Catholic fanaticism and forced to migrate constantly. The goldsmith Éléazar and his daughter, the beautiful Rachel, take in a young man who introduces himself as Samuel, but the truth and the price of love will only too soon become clear to the protagonists.

American director David Alden will treat the harsh and disturbing plot of La Juive with his trademark sense of irony and black comedy. At his side to rekindle this complicated, exciting and dangerous operatic artefact, Marc Minkowski reigns as the undisputed maestro of French grand opera.