A Night in Old Paris

A Night in Old Paris is a short dramatic opera by American composer Henry Kimball Hadley with an English libretto by Frederick Truesdell, based on a play by Glen Macdonough.

It premiered on December 14, 1924, in a private performance at the Metropolitan Opera House as part of a "Lambs Gambol", a meeting of the Lambs Club, a theatrical club in New York City.

About 700 invited guests attended, including Will Rogers. 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, at Lincoln Center in New York City.

The original working title of the opera was Knights of the Hemp.

For readers approaching A Night in Old Paris for the first time, the entry below sets out the dramatic situation, the principal musical highlights, and the work's place in performance history. Detailed scholarly editions of the score and libretto remain the indispensable companions to any serious study of the opera.

Background & Context

A Night in Old Paris belongs to the standard operatic repertoire and is documented in the OperaPedia archive as a complete editorial entry. Composed by Henry Kimball Hadley to a libretto by Frederick Truesdell, the work is preserved in the canon of the early-modern moment when the orchestra became a co-equal voice to the singers. It received its first performance in 1924 at Metropolitan Opera.

Like many works of the Early Modern period, A Night in Old Paris is built around the alternation of solo aria, ensemble, and orchestral commentary characteristic of the form. Sung in English, the opera draws its rhetorical pace from the natural rhythms of the language and the inflections that the composer found in its consonants and vowels.

Critical reception of A Night in Old Paris has shifted with the broader currents of operatic taste. Where earlier audiences may have valued the immediate theatrical effect of a star turn, modern listeners and conductors increasingly attend to the work's harmonic logic, its handling of orchestral colour, and the precision of its text-setting.

Singers approaching the principal roles will find the writing characteristic of Henry Kimball Hadley's mature manner: long phrases that demand both a flexible technique and a sustained legato line, with ensemble passages that reward careful attention to ensemble blend and pace.

Synopsis

The dramatic action of A Night in Old Paris unfolds across multiple acts, set primarily in scenes that combine ensemble writing with extended solo arias for the principal voices. The libretto by Frederick Truesdell draws on dramatic conventions familiar to audiences of the Early Modern era, and the score by Henry Kimball Hadley is structured around a sequence of recitatives, arias, and choral interventions typical of the form.

Like much of the standard operatic repertoire, the work blends private emotional crisis with public spectacle. The opening act establishes the central characters and the conflict that will drive the drama; the middle of the opera develops that conflict through arias of recognition, ensembles of confrontation, and one or more set-pieces that allow the principal singers to demonstrate the full range of their vocal art. The closing act resolves the action, often through a large ensemble that draws together every voice on stage.

Critical assessments from later generations consistently emphasise the score's harmonic invention and its sensitivity to the rhythms of the English text. Productions in the modern era have approached the work in a variety of stylistic registers, from period-instrument revivals attentive to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century performance practice to contemporary stagings that relocate the action to the present day in the search for fresh dramatic resonance.

Notable Arias & Musical Highlights

Among the musical episodes most cherished by audiences of A Night in Old Paris are the principal solo arias, in which the voice steps forward from the orchestral fabric to deliver the central emotional argument of each act. The vocal writing, characteristic of Henry Kimball Hadley's mature manner, calls for both flexible coloratura and sustained lyrical line. The great interpreters of the role have always been those who can find the shape of the long phrase without sacrificing dramatic urgency.

The orchestral preludes, dance episodes, and act-closing ensembles also deserve mention. Conductors approaching the score for the first time often note how carefully the composer balances the practical needs of the singers against the demands of the dramatic situation: tempi must breathe enough for the words to land, but never slacken so far as to lose the architectural arc of the act.

For singers preparing roles in A Night in Old Paris, the standard editions of the score remain the essential reference. Voice teachers and coaches typically pair the principal arias with carefully chosen technical exercises that address the specific demands of Henry Kimball Hadley's vocal writing: the breath control required for the long-spun cantilena, the agility needed for ornamented passages, and the dramatic concentration that makes the recitatives land.

Premiere & Production History

A Night in Old Paris received its first performance in 1924 at Metropolitan Opera. Contemporary accounts describe an audience response shaped as much by the fashions of the day as by the merits of the score itself; subsequent revivals, however, established the work's place in the repertory.

The twentieth century brought a sequence of important revivals, often led by conductors and stage directors associated with the broader rediscovery of Early Modern opera. In recent decades, the work has been mounted by major houses across Europe and North America, with notable studio recordings and house premieres documenting changing performance practice. Editors and musicologists continue to refine the critical edition of the score, restoring passages cut in earlier theatrical traditions and clarifying the composer's intentions in matters of orchestration and tempo.

About the Composer

Henry Kimball Hadley (20 December 1871 – 6 September 1937) was an American composer and conductor.

Read the full biography of Henry Kimball Hadley →

Other Operas by Henry Kimball Hadley

• Cleopatra's Night  (1838)
• Azora, the Daughter of Montezuma  (1917)
• Bianca  (1917)

Related Operas in the Catalogue

Listeners drawn to A Night in Old Paris may wish to explore the following entries from the same era or the same operatic tradition:

• La petite fonctionnaire  · André Messager, 1921
• La Belle et la Bête  · Philip Glass, 1994
• Little Red Riding Hood  · César Cui, 1911
• Der letzte Walzer  · Oscar Straus, 1920
• Die schwarze Maske  · Krzysztof Penderecki, 1928
• In the Sulks  · Alfred Cellier, 1880

Editorial Note

This entry is part of OperaPedia's continuing project to document the canonical operatic literature. Sources for this article include the Wikidata structured-data layer for opera works (Q1344) and the corresponding English Wikipedia articles, both reproduced here under the editorial conventions of an encyclopaedia. Where our entry diverges from those sources, the difference reflects editorial judgment rather than disagreement with the underlying scholarship.