About the work
Les diamants de la couronne is an opéra comique in three acts by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, first performed on 6 March 1841 at the Paris Opéra-Comique.
Plot
The Portuguese princess Catarina, forced to sell the crown jewels to cover state debts, secretly leads, under a false identity, a gang that forges convincing fake diamonds to replace the sold gems. The young nobleman Don Henrique, on his way to marry his cousin Diana, falls into the hands of the supposed bandits and falls in love with their mysterious leader without suspecting her true identity.
Cultural significance
With 379 performances at the Opéra-Comique by 1889, the work was one of Auber's greatest stage successes and was restaged within a few years in Brussels, Naples, Munich, Prague, Hamburg and elsewhere.