Background
Auber moved to the larger stage of the Paris OpéraOpera with La Muette de Portici (1828) and Gustave III (1833), two works that did much to set the course of French grand opera in the 19th century. La Muette made history by introducing large-scale historical drama to the lyric stage. It further provided the OpéraOpera with its first spectacular demonstration of new lighting and scenic techniques developed earlier in the boulevard theaters by men such as Louis Daguerre and Robert Fulton. Auber tried to match the size and melodramatic quality of his subject matter, but he was quite unsuited to the grand style. Genre pictures were more his forte. His music is small in range, light-textured, tuneful, and unpretentious. By training and inclination he belonged to the more intimate opéraopera comique, to which he returned after Gustave.