About the work
Richard Cœur de Lion is an opéra comique in three acts by André Grétry to a libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine, premiered on 21 October 1784 at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris. It dramatises the medieval legend of Richard the Lionheart’s captivity in Austria after the Third Crusade.
Plot
The troubadour Blondel searches for his imprisoned king, recognising him by a song the two once composed together. Singing the first verse below a dungeon window, he hears Richard answer with the second, revealing his whereabouts. With the help of loyal companions, Blondel engineers the king’s escape.
Cultural significance
The romance “Ô Richard, ô mon roi” became the opera’s most famous number and was later adopted as a royalist anthem during the Revolution, at times leading to the work being banned from the stage. With its medieval setting and captivity-and-rescue plot, the opera is considered a forerunner of French rescue opera and of Romantic opera.