Despite the lavish production, the premiere was a failure, and La Esmeralda proved to be the last opera composed by Bertin, although she lived for another 40 years.

Two of her later operas were produced at the Opéra-Comique, Le loup-garou (The Werewolf) in 1827 and Fausto in 1831 (again with a libretto by Bertin, this time adapted from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's play Faust).

Although many of Victor Hugo's plays and novels were later adapted as operas (e.g. Hernani, Ruy Blas, Le roi s'amuse, Angelo, Tyrant of Padua, Marie Tudor, and Lucrèce Borgia), La Esmeralda was the first and only libretto which he wrote himself in direct collaboration with the composer.

He immediately commenced work on a libretto, completing it on his return to Paris (despite the frenzy of rehearsals for his play Le Roi s'amuse), and sending Louise the first draft manuscript on 30 October 1832.

[4] The process of preparing the final libretto was slow, and rehearsals for the opera did not begin until over three years after Hugo wrote the first lines.

Bertin's requests for lines of various lengths to fit the music partly contributed to this as well as the task of condensing a long novel into a four-hour opera.

The opera libretto was submitted to the censors in January 1836 who required the title to be changed to La Esmeralda and all references to Claude Frollo as a priest to be removed.

The four principal roles were assigned to the reigning stars of the Paris Opera: Cornélie Falcon, Adolphe Nourrit, Nicolas Levasseur and Jean-Étienne Massol.

There were also backstage rumblings that the opera was only being produced because of the Bertin family's influence and a persistent rumor that Berlioz had written the best arias in the piece, a back-handed compliment which he firmly denied.

There were hisses and groans, and after the one aria, Quasimodo's "Air des Cloches" ("Song of the Bells") in act 4, several members of the audience, including Alexandre Dumas, shouted "It's by Berlioz!".

For the last of these, 16 December 1836, it had been shortened to three acts and was followed by the ballet La Fille du Danube starring Marie Taglioni.

": A first fatality was this suppression of a work the singers of which were M. Nourrit and Mademoiselle Falcon, the composer a woman of great talent, the librettist M. Victor Hugo, and the subject Notre-Dame de Paris.

The Duke of Orleans named a mare of great value Esmeralda and in a steeple-chase she ran against a horse at a gallop and got her head broken.

Franz Liszt's version of the score reduced for piano and voice was published by Troupenas in 1837 and republished in 2009 by Lucie Gallande.

The first act, revised to include the principal arias from the rest of the opera, continued to be performed sporadically between 1837 and 1839 as a curtain-raiser for ballet productions, and excerpts from the work were played in a concert in 1865.

However, La Esmeralda was revived in February 2002 when it was staged to piano accompaniment (using the Bertin/Liszt score) at the Théâtre-Opéra in Besançon to mark the 200th anniversary of Hugo's birth.

Scene 1: A prison At the behest of Frollo, Esmeralda has been imprisoned and sentenced to death for the murder of Phoebus, although unbeknownst to her he is still alive.

As the crowd pours into the square to witness the execution, Quasimodo grabs Esmeralda and takes her into the cathedral where she will have sanctuary from the executioner.