The Bells (play)

The Bells is a play in three acts by Leopold David Lewis which was one of the greatest successes of the British actor Henry Irving.

The Bells is a translation by Leopold Lewis of the 1867 play Le Juif polonais (The Polish Jew) by Erckmann-Chatrian.

Le Juif polonais was also adapted into an opera of the same name in three acts by Camille Erlanger, composed to a libretto by Henri Caïn.

In the stalls there was a general agreement that Henry Irving had fulfilled the promise of dramatic intensity which he had shown in his recitation of The Dream of Eugene Aram.

But when the final curtain fell the audience, after a gasp or two, realised that they had witnessed the most masterly form of tragic acting that the British stage had seen for many a long day, and there was a storm of cheers.

Then, still pale, still haggard, still haunted, as it were, by the terror he had so perfectly counterfeited, the actor came forward with the sort of smile that did not destroy the character of the Burgomaster or dispel the illusion of the stage.

The overture and incidental music for The Bells was originally composed by Etienne Singla, Chef d'orchestre of the Théâtre Cluny in Paris for the opera Le Juif polonais in 1869.

[4] As they drove home from the opening night of The Bells, Irving's wife, Florence, criticised his profession: "Are you going on making a fool of yourself like this all your life?"

Set in Alsace, the border country between France and Germany, Irving played the burgomaster and family man Mathias, who, fifteen years before, on the night of 24 December 1818, to pay off his mortgage debt, had robbed a wealthy Polish Jewish seed merchant named Koveski who had come to Mathias' inn, killing him with an axe and throwing his body into a lime kiln.