The World of Opera

Le roi de Lahore ("The king of Lahore") is an opera in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Louis Gallet. It was first performed at the Palais Garnier in Paris on 27 April 1877 in costumes designed by Eugène Lacoste and settings designed by Jean Émile Daran (Act I, scene 1), Auguste-Alfred Rubé and Philippe Chaperon (Act I, scene 2; Act V), Louis Chéret (Act II), Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (Act III), Antoine Lavastre and Eugène Louis Carpezat (Act IV).
 

Le roi de Lahore is Massenet's third extant opera and was his first major success in Paris, spawning performances across Europe and leading to his place as one of the most popular composers of his time.

Within a year of the premiere the opera was performed, for instance, in Turin, Rome, Bologna, and Venice. The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, presented it in London in 1879, and in 1906 it premiered in Monte Carlo. The US premiere took place in 1883 at the French Opera House in New Orleans.
 

By the time of the Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1924, however, Le roi de Lahore in particular, and Massenet's style of romantic opera in general, faded in fashion so much that it received only six performances and has never been revived there since.
 

Contemporary performances include a revival by the Vancouver Opera in 1977 starring Joan Sutherland and conducted by Richard Bonynge. The same production was mounted at the San Francisco Opera and subsequently recorded. A more recent revival occurred at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 2005 under the baton of Marcello Viotti, a performance of which was released on CD and DVD.