A Night in Old Paris is a short dramatic opera by American composer Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley was an American composer and conductor.-Life:Hadley was born into a musical family in Somerville, Massachusetts...

 with an English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 libretto by Frederick Truesdell, based on a play by Glen Macdonough

Glen MacDonough

Glen MacDonough was a US American writer, lyricist and librettist. He was the son of theater manager Thomas B. MacDonough and actress/author Laura Don...

. It premiered on December 14, 1924 in a private performance at the Metropolitan Opera

Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...

 House as part of a "Lambs Gambol", a meeting of the Lambs Club, a theatrical club in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. About 700 invited guests attended, including Will Rogers

Will Rogers

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....

. It was first performed for the public in a radio performance on January 20, 1933. Never published, its manuscript full score, vocal score, and orchestral parts are all in the collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...

, at Lincoln Center in New York City. The original working title of the opera was Knights of the Hemp.

Story

The setting of the opera is a small Parisian tavern, in the dead of winter, during the 17th century. A group of torturers meet, and compare stories. The mistress of the tavern listens intently as one of the men recounts how, years ago, he'd tortured a young man. Just before the young man died, he'd promised his tormentor that one day he'd return from the grave to drag his soul to hell. Hearing the story, the mistress realizes that this cruel man had once been her lover—who'd abandoned her, unaware that she was pregnant. She also realized to her horror, that the young man he'd he was boasting about murdering had been their son. As members of this cruel brotherhood get up to leave, she entices her former love to remain for another drink with her. She secretly poisons his drink, and relates the part of his story that he did not know to him as he dies in agony. As he slumps to the floor, the tavern door swings violently open, and the shade of the dead youth arrives to claim the soul of his torturer.