Le cœur et la main

He eventually finds that his royal bride is in fact the woman he has fallen in love with while unaware of her real identity.

[1] Having quarrelled with the director of the Renaissance, Victor Koning, Lecocq had transferred his allegiance to the Théâtre de Nouveautés, where in 1881 he had a box-office hit with Le jour et la nuit[2] Le cœur et la main was written to succeed it.

[3] They continued with the theme, familiar from earlier Lecocq operas, of thwarted and confused wedding nights with a happy ending.

[4] The opera opened on 19 October 1882, as the run of Le jour et la nuit was coming towards its end.

Act I The Royal Park A marriage has been arranged between Micaëla, the King's daughter, and Don Gaëtan, Crown Prince of a neighbouring country.

Finding Micaëla's and Gaëtan's nuptial chamber unoccupied Joséfa and Moralès yield to the temptation to put it to use themselves.

Act III A camp, Gaëtan's headquarters During a grand military manoeuvre, Micaëla and her suite have retired to a nearby convent.

Moralès apologises to him for having, on the wedding night, used the nuptial chamber for personal purposes, and Gaëtan now thinks he knows who is the father of the future Crown Prince.

[7] In their 1988 study of musical theatre Kurt Gänzl and Andrew Lamb record no further performances of the piece, in Paris or anywhere else.

[5] Lamb, writing in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, counts it the last of Lecocq's real successes.

In spite of the excellent box-office takings, the director of the theatre, for administrative reasons known to him, abruptly interrupted the run after the hundredth performance to stage another piece.

[4]According to the critical consensus, at the time and subsequently, Le cœur et la main is too noticeably similar to its predecessors, musically and dramatically.