Herculanum in a time of change in French grand opéra

In a good many ways, Herculanum openly continues the spirit of the French grand opéra as enshrined by Meyerbeer. It brings together French and Italian styles, but always with an eye to directness and comprehensibility. Even so, the work also serves as an example of the ‘second wave’ of the genre elaborated in the 1830s and which, after 1850, came under the influence of the new post-Donizettian Italian opera, and especially of Verdi.