Malvina, Uthal's wife and Larmor's daughter, is divided between love for her husband and her father and seeks in vain to delay the war.

In his Treatise on Orchestration, Berlioz, an admirer of the composer, wrote, "Méhul was so struck by the kinship between the sound of violas and the dreamy character of Ossianic poetry that in his opera Uthal he used them constantly, even to the complete exclusion of the violins.

Edward Dent wrote, "It has been suggested that the opera would for this reason [i.e. the lack of violins] be unbearably tedious, but, as Sir Donald Tovey has pointed out, Uthal is in one act only and quite short, so that its peculiar colouring would hardly have time to become oppressive.

[4] The overture depicting the heroine Malvina crying out for her lost father amid the storm has been compared to similar opening music in Grétry's Aucassin et Nicolette and Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride (both 1779).

Stanford Robinson conducted the BBC Concert Orchestra with John Wakefield in the role of Uthal and Laura Sarti as Malvina.