The opera was immediately successful from its first night on 21 November 1831 at the Opéra; the dramatic music, harmony and orchestration, its melodramatic plot, its star singers and its sensational stage effects compelled Frédéric Chopin, who was in the audience, to say, "If ever magnificence was seen in the theatre, I doubt that it reached the level of splendour shown in Robert...It is a masterpiece...Meyerbeer has made himself immortal".

The Journal de Paris announced on 19 April 1827 that the libretto of Scribe and Delavigne had been passed by the censor and that 'the music is to be entrusted to a composer, M. Meyer-Beer, who, having acquired a brilliant reputation in Germany and Italy, is extending it to our country, where several of his works have been already successfully represented.

'[4] The libretto was fabricated on the basis of old legends about Duke Robert the Magnificent of Normandy, the father of William the Conqueror, alleged in some versions to have been the son of the Devil.

The plot reflected 'the fantastic legendary elements which fascinated the opera public of 1830', a taste which had evolved from the 1824 Paris production of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz (in its French version Robin des bois), which also features a doubtful hero befriended by a demon promising him success.

[7] This entailed some significant rewriting of the storyline, reducing the essentially comic role of Raimbaut (who vanishes after Act 3 in the final version, but whose antics – including the spending of Bertram's money – continued throughout in the earlier libretto).

It also meant that the traditional 'pairing' of lovers in opéra comique (Robert/Isabelle paralleled throughout by the 'lower-class' Raimbaut/Alice) was swept aside in favour of concentration on the more sensational story-line of Robert's diabolic ancestry.

[9] Its characterisation as a "French grand opera" placed it in succession to Auber's La muette de Portici (1828) and Rossini's William Tell (1829) in this new genre.

The success owed much to the opera's star singers – Levasseur as Bertram, Nourrit as Robert — and to the provocative "Ballet of the Nuns" in the third act, featuring the great ballerina, Marie Taglioni.

The audience's prurient delight in this scandalous scene is well conveyed by the reviewer for the Revue des Deux-Mondes: A crowd of mute shades glides through the arches.

All these women cast off their nuns' costume, they shake off the cold powder of the grave; suddenly they throw themselves into the delights of their past life; they dance like bacchantes, they play like lords, they drink like sappers.

Her tragic demeanor and dark looks were highly appropriate to the part,[16] and she made a vivid impression on the public,[17] which included on that night Auber, Berlioz, Halévy, Maria Malibran, Giulia Grisi, Honoré Daumier, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo.

However, he was impressed by the newcomer Mario (Cavaliere Giovanni Matteo di Candia), and wrote for him a new aria for Robert which was performed at his debut in the revival of the opera on 30 November 1838.

[1] In 1832 the opera reached Berlin, Strasbourg, Dublin and Liège; in 1833 Brussels, Copenhagen, Vienna and Marseilles; in 1834 Lyon, Budapest, The Hague, Amsterdam and Saint Petersburg;[19] in 1835 (12 May) it obtained its first American performance in the original French at the Théâtre d'Orléans in New Orleans.

He travelled to London to check the singers and production for the original version,[22] and requested that the German translation for Berlin be undertaken by the poet Ludwig Rellstab, strongly recommending that Taglioni and her father Fillipo be re-engaged, and that Ciceri's sets should be reproduced.

[24] In 1847 Felix Mendelssohn attended a London performance of Robert – an opera which musically he despised[25] – in order to hear Jenny Lind's British debut, in the role of Alice.

[27] In 1898, George Bernard Shaw, in The Perfect Wagnerite, had already cast scorn on Robert and commented that "Nowadays young people cannot understand how anyone could have taken Meyerbeer's influence seriously.

In 1984 the revival at the Paris Opéra with Rockwell Blake (Robert), Samuel Ramey (Bertram), Walter Donati (Raimbaut), Michèle Lagrange (Alice) and June Anderson (Isabelle) was the first performance there since 1893.

[36] On the shore at Palermo Robert and his mysterious friend Bertram are among a group of knights who are preparing to compete in a tournament for the hand of Princess Isabelle.

A room in the palace at Palermo Isabelle is sad at Robert's absence and expresses her unease that their marriage will never take place (En vain j’espère).

She overhears strange chanting coming from the cave and decides to listen; she learns that Bertram will lose Robert forever if he cannot persuade him to sign away his soul to the Devil by midnight.

Robert arrives, mourning the loss of Isabelle, and Bertram tells him that to win her he should seize a magic branch from the tomb of Saint Rosalia in a nearby deserted cloister.

Hector Berlioz was particularly impressed; he wrote an entire article in the Revue et gazette musicale, entitled 'On the Orchestration of Robert le diable ', which concluded: The opera was perceived to have weaknesses of characterization.

"[43] But the critic Fétis gave the consensus opinion: "Robert le diable is not only a masterpiece; it is also a remarkable work within the history of music ...[it] seems to me to unite all the qualities needed to establish a composer's reputation unshakeably.

Berlioz wrote "I can't forget that Meyerbeer was only able to persuade [the Opéra] to put on Robert le diable ... by paying the administration sixty thousand francs of his own money"; and Chopin lamented "Meyerbeer had to work for three years and pay his own expenses for his stay in Paris before Robert le diable could be staged ... Three years, that's a lot – it's too much.

Alexandre Dumas set a chapter of The Count of Monte Cristo between two acts of Robert; and George Sand wrote about it at length in her Lettres d'un voyageur.

[51] Also, the absence of starchy historical content in Robert doubtless played a part in attracting the bourgeoisie to the opera, until then regarded as primarily an aristocratic entertainment.

The success of the opera also justified the government's policy of 'privatization' in selling the management to Véron, and this was a landmark in the dilution of state control and patronage in the fine arts.

However, while they used 'the same dazzling theatrical rhetoric' as Robert, they led to 'uniformly horrific dénouements' with 'gripping moral urgency', their more sophisticated plot-lines reflecting the changes in taste of the new opera clientele.

The brilliant transcription of its themes (Reminiscences de Robert le diable)[55] made by the composer and virtuoso Franz Liszt was so popular that it became his calling card: on more than one occasion he was forced to interrupt his programmed concerts to play it because of the demands of the audience.

It is referenced in the opening scene of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera, where one of the items being auctioned off is described as "Lot 664: a wooden pistol and three human skulls from the 1831 production of Robert le diable by Meyerbeer.