"Les Huguenots," and "Faust," got its primal value and significance. Two
men of genius, Gluck and Grétry, had formed the taste of the public in
being faithful to the accents of nature. The idea of reconciling this
taste, founded on strict truth, with the seductive charm of the Italian
forms, to which the French were beginning to be sensible, suggested to
Cherubini a system of lyric drama capable of satisfying both. Wagner
himself even says, in his "Tendencies and Theories," speaking of
Cherubini and his great co-laborers Méhul and Spontini: "It would be
difficult to answer them, if they now perchance came among us and asked
in what respect we had improved on their mode of musical procedure."

"Lodoïska," which cast the old Italian operas into permanent oblivion,
and laid the foundation of the modern French dramatic school in music,
has a libretto similar to that of "Fidelio" and Grétry's "Coeur de Lion"
combined, and was taken from a romance of Faiblas by Fillette Loraux.
The critics found only one objection: the music was all so beautiful
that no breathing time was granted the listener. In one year the opera
was performed two hundred times, and at short intervals two hundred more
representations took place.

The Revolution culminated in the crisis of 1793, which sent the King to
the scaffold. Cherubini found a retreat at La Chartreuse, near Rouen,
the country seat of his friend, the architect Louis. Here he lived in
tranquillity, and composed several minor pieces and a three-act opera,
never produced, but afterward worked over into "Ali Baba" and "Faniska."
In his Norman retreat Cherubini heard of the death of his father, and
while suffering under this infliction, just before his return to Paris
in 1794, he composed the opera of "Elisa." This work wras received
with much favor at the Feydeau theatre, though it did not arouse the
admiration called out by "Lodoïska."