[+] Dale, Catherine. "The Mirror of Romanticism: Images of Music, Religion, and Art Criticism in George Sand's Eleventh Lettre d'un voyageur to Giacomo Meyerbeer." Romanic Review 87, no. 1 (1996): 83-112.
In letters written between 1834 and 1836, Georges Sand traced the developments of Romanticism and provided a narrative for its artistic, religious, and social aspects. Giacomo Meyerbeer's borrowing of Martin Luther's Ein feste Burg in Les Huguenots is one such example of an emerging Romantic aesthetic. Even though Meyerbeer turned to an older German chorale form in his opera, he updated it to become Romantic by using the tune as "local color" for crowd scenes on the stage and in particular for Huguenots. Meyerbeer effectively truncated the tune in a culminating scene in Act V, in which Catholic assassins enter, and the Huguenots stop singing it. Throughout the opera, Ein feste Burg signifies perseverance in the face of religious persecution.
Works: Meyerbeer: Les Huguenots (92-93).
Sources: Luther: Ein feste Burg (92).
Index Classifications: 1800s
Contributed by: Katie Lundeen
