Musicologist Julian Budden provides examples of those composers who had crossed the Alps, the most well-known being Rossini and Donizetti (as well as Vincenzo Bellini who, before he died in 1835, was planning a French grand opera.)

[2] After conducting the premiere of I masnadieri in London and within a week of Verdi's arrival in Paris on 27 July 1847, he received his first commission from the company, agreeing to adapt I Lombardi to a new French libretto.

[3] The adaptation meant that Verdi could "try his hand at grand opera" without having to write something entirely new,[4] a strategy which both Donizetti and Rossini had employed for their Paris debuts.

In addition, Verdi added a standard ballet and new music, but re-shaped much of the structure by removing inappropriate material he felt to be weak.

From Paris, he fulfilled the obligation to write the opera Il corsaro from a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave which took place in Trieste in October 1848.

Also, he worked with Salvadore Cammarano on two librettos, one for La battaglia di Legnano (then attend its January 1849 Rome premiere), the other being Luisa Miller which was presented in Naples in December 1849 after Verdi's return to Italy.

Many writers, including Baldini and Frank Walker, have speculated on supposed relationships which Verdi, a man then close to (and then in) his thirties, might have had (or did have) with women in the years following his first wife's death.

She sang the first Abigaille, and continued on and off with that role in spite of her declining voice up to her retirement and move to Paris in October 1846 where she became a singing teacher in November and also planned a concert of Verdi's music for the following June.

[16] However, the couple were to remain together for many years, and when the time came to leave Paris, Verdi left in late July and "made straight for Busseto to wait for her there",[17] while it appear that Strepponi visited her family in Florence and Pavia before joining him.

[21] Given in the original French, the opera was staged by the Opéra in Paris in March/April 1984 under Donato Renzetti with Alain Fondary singing the role of the Count.

[23] It was broadcast in French in Britain under Edward Downes with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra on 11 May 1986, and June Anderson was featured in the cast as Hélène.

[24] In the 1990s, Jérusalem appeared under Zubin Mehta, also in French, at the Vienna State Opera with a cast including José Carreras (as Gaston) and Samuel Ramey (as Roger).

Unexpectedly, Raymond, Gaston's squire, appears in a state of exhaustion and he begs Roger, whom he believes to be a holy man, for help, telling him that others of his Crusader group are lost.

They are met by a band of newly arrived Crusaders led by the Count, who praises God for saving him from the assassin's dagger, and the Papal Legate.

Roger appears requesting that he may be allowed to join them in their battle and the three proclaim their anticipated victory (Trio and chorus: Le Seigneur nous promet la victoire!

However, they are left alone and are joyous in their reunion, until Gaston attempts to dissuade Hélène from associating with him in his dishonor (Aria: Dans la honte et l'épouvante / "You cannot share in the horror and shame of my wandering life!").

But, when the Emir enters and is told that the Christians are close to attacking the city, he orders that if the invaders are successful, Hélène's head should be thrown to the Count.

Defiantly, Hélène challenges the Crusaders (Aria: Non ... non votre rage / "No ... no, your anger, your unworthy outrage") as well as her father ("The shame and crime are yours!").

The procession continues on, although Hélène hangs back as the Legate approaches Roger and asks him to give some comfort to the condemned man who is then brought out.

In describing the changes made to the original opera, Budden observes that the revised version has far greater strengths than those acknowledged by many Italian and English writers and that "the diffuse drama which Solera had distilled from an epic poem is replaced by a far tauter, more concentrated plot which not only makes fewer demands on our credulity than I Lombardi but also avoids the problem of a second tenor who needs to be weightier and more heroic than the first.

"[32] He continues by acknowledging that the newly composed numbers and the repositioning of the original ones were: soldered together by linking passages of far greater significance than the string-accompanied recitative which they replace.

The entire opera, as befits one designed for the French stage, is more "through-composed" than its parent work; and only a sentimentalist could regret the omission of all that was most embarrassingly naïf in the original score.

[32]Roger Parker finds two particularly strong elements in the French version: firstly, "that by converting Arvino from a tenor to a baritone, [he] solves one of the problems of vocal distribution that occurred [in the original]" and, secondly, that this version "serves as a fascinating first document in charting Verdi's relationship with the French stage, a relationship that was to become increasingly important during the next decade.

"[5] Not surprisingly, Budden (and others writing on the subject over the past 30 years, including Baldini who calls it "a tired, disheartened reshuffle" [33]), regard Jérusalem as "something less than a masterpiece",[32] but his chapter concludes with a summary of what the experience of working in Paris did for Verdi and the part it played in moving the composer forward towards his mature style: "It fixed his dramatic imagination, refined his scoring, sharpened his harmonic palate; and in general made possible the amazing advances of the next few years.