About the work
Noé is an opera in four acts by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges, freely reworking the biblical story of Noah and the Flood. Halévy worked on it until his death in 1862 without finishing it; his son-in-law Georges Bizet completed the score but died himself in 1875 before fully working out the finale and ballet music. The work finally reached the stage in Karlsruhe on 5 April 1885, ten years after Bizet's death.
Plot
Starting from the story of Noah's Ark, the libretto departs far from its biblical source, adding a fallen angel, an abduction in the desert and a riotous bacchanal scene before the Flood engulfs humanity.
Cultural significance
Because the original manuscript is lost, Halévy's and Bizet's respective shares in the score can hardly be disentangled; missing passages for the premiere were filled in with themes from Bizet's own Les pêcheurs de perles and Djamileh. The work remained largely unknown for over a century until a staged production at the Théâtre impérial de Compiègne in 2004, released on DVD, brought it back into view.