It was at the Variétés in December, 1864, that the _Belle Hélène_ was produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM. Meilhac and Halévy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief among these are _Barbe-bleue_, the _Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein_, the _Brigands_ and _Périchole_. When we recall the fact that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halévy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the _Belle Hélène_ or the _Grande Duchesse_. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halévy have ceased writing for M. Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq--the _Petit Duc_ and the _Grande Demoiselle_. These are rather light comic operas than true _opéras-bouffes_, but if there is an elevation in the style of the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the _Grande Duchesse_ to the _Petit Duc_ is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained--the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story--akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama _Clancarty_--is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Périchole so touching, or of the true comic force which projected Général Bourn. _Carmen_, which, like _Périchole_, owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Mérimée, is little more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-makers: it was sufficient for its purpose, no more and no less.
Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and Halévy, that one is easily first and foremost which has for its heroine the Helen of Troy whom Marlowe's Faustus declared
Fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.
In the _Belle Hélène_ we see the higher wit of M. Meilhac. M. Halévy had been at the same college with him, and they had pored together over the same legends of old time, but working without M. Meilhac on _Orphée aux Enfers_, M. Halévy showed his inferiority, for _Orphée_ is the old-fashioned anachronistic skit on antiquity--funny if you will, but with a fun often labored, not to say forced--the fun of physical incongruity and exaggeration. But in the _Belle Hélène_ the fun, easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit--so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce. Planché's _Golden Fleece_ is in the same vein, but the ore is not as rich. Frere's _Loves of the Triangles_ and some of his _Anti-Jacobin_ writing are perhaps as good in quality, but the subjects are inferior and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques and the cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-makers are not to be mentioned in the same breath with this scholarly fooling. There is something in the French genius akin to the Greek, and here was a Gallic wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and wring the uttermost drop of fun from it without recourse to the devices of the booth at the fair, the false nose and the simulation of needless ugliness. The French play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or epilepsy, and it was not so lacking in grace that we could not recall the original story without a shudder. There is no shattering of an ideal, and one cannot reproach the authors of the _Belle Hélène_ with what Theophrastus Such calls "debasing the moral currency, lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition."