Le Juif Polonais is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 in three acts by Camille Erlanger

Camille Erlanger

Camille Erlanger was a Parisian-born French opera composer. He studied at the Paris Conservatory under Léo Delibes and Émile Durand, and in 1888 won the Prix de Rome for his cantata Velléda...

 composed to a libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Henri Cain

Henri Cain

Henri Caïn was a French dramatist, opera and ballet librettist. He wrote over forty librettos from 1893 to his death, for many of the most prominent composers of the Parisian Belle Epoque....

. The libretto was adapted from the 1867 play of the same name by Erckmann-Chatrian. The opera was first performed at the Théâtre Cluny in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

 in 1869.

The Erckmann-Chatrian play was translated into English in 1871 as The Bells

The Bells (play)

The Bells is a play in three acts by Leopold Davis Lewis which was one of the greatest successes of the British actor Henry Irving. The play opened on November 25 1871 at the Lyceum Theatre in London and initially ran for 151 performances...

by Leopold Lewis and was one of Henry Irving

Henry Irving

Sir Henry Irving , born John Henry Brodribb, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as...

's greatest successes. A melodramatic climax occurs when the sound of sleigh bells at his daughter's wedding (in Act II) reminds the innkeeper Mathias of the Jew he had murdered 15 years previously. Dreaming (in Act III) that he is being tried for the murder, he confesses the details of the attack and his disposal of the body, and dies of a heart attack.

The opera was first performed in Paris at the Opéra Comique

Opera Comique

The Opera Comique was a 19th-century theatre constructed in Westminster, London, between Wych Street and Holywell Street with entrances on the East Strand. It opened in 1870 and was demolished in 1902, to make way for the construction of the Aldwych and Kingsway...

 on April 11, 1900, when the cast included Gustave Huberdeau

Gustave Huberdeau

Gustave Huberdeau was a French operatic bass-baritone who had a prolific career in Europe and the United States during the first quarter of the twentieth century...

, the tenor Edmond Clément

Edmond Clément

Edmond Clément was a French lyric tenor who earned an international reputation due to the polished artistry of his singing....

 as Christian and Victor Maurel

Victor Maurel

Victor Maurel was a French operatic baritone who enjoyed an international reputation as a great singing-actor.-Biography:...

 as Mathias. The role of Mathias's daughter Suzelle was created by Julia Giruadon.

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...

 chose to present the work in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 in 1906, where it proved a dismal failure. The plot was found to be thin, and the music insufficient to support interest. According to Alma Mahler

Alma Mahler

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel was a Viennese-born socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men...

, her husband had been reminded, when he heard the work in Paris, of his own Fourth Symphony

Symphony No. 4 (Mahler)

The Symphony No. 4 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1899 and 1901, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. The song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of Heaven. It is sung by a soprano in the work's fourth and last movement...

 by the sleighbells. Viennese critics rated the work as inferior to another on the same theme by Karel Weis

Karel Weis

Karel Weis was a Czech composer and folksong collector. He was born in Prague.-Biography:...

, produced in Vienna in 1902. Nevertheless the opera remained in the repertory in France until the 1930s.