Ludovic is a two act opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 to a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. The music, by Ferdinand Hérold, was left unfinished at his death, and the work was completed by Fromental Halévy

Fromental Halévy

Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...

.

The plot, elements of which were later reworked by Halévy and Saint-Georges in Le val d'Andorre

Le val d'Andorre

Le val d'Andorre is an opéra comique by Fromental Halévy with a libretto by Saint-Georges.-Early productions:The opera was premiered on 11 November 1848 at the Opéra-Comique in Paris...

(1847), centres on misplaced alliance, love, forced conscription, flight, pardon and marriage.

Chopin

Frédéric Chopin

Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....

 wrote a set of variations (opus 12, 1833) on the Act I aria "Je vends des Scapulaires" from Ludovic.

Performance history

The opera was premiered by the Paris Opéra-Comique

Opéra-Comique

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the...

 at the Salle de la Bourse on 16 May 1833, and achieved 70 performances by the end of 1834, making it a modest success.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 16 May 1833 (Conductor: - )
Ludovic	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Louis-Augustin Lemonnier
Nice	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Marie Massy
Gregorio	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Vizentini
Francesca	soprano	Félicité Pradher
Scipion	bass

Synopsis

The opera is set in the countryside around Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

 and the main characters are Ludovic, a farmer from Corsica

Corsica

Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea. It is located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia....

, Francesca, who owns the farm he manages, and her cousin Gregorio. A bizarre touch, which would perhaps make the opera unacceptable to present-day sensibilities, is that when, at the end of act I, Ludovic hears of Francesca's intended marriage to Gregorio, he shoots her, wounding her in the arm. This apparently serves to make her fall in love with her assailant.