Héléna (opera) Héléna (opera) Héléna is an opera in three acts by the French composer Étienne Méhul. It premiered at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on 1 March 1803. The libretto is by Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. It enjoyed 36 performances in the space of 20 months before disappearing from the theatre's repertoire. Bouilly was accused of basing the plot too closely on Cherubini's "Les deux journées". According to the musicologist Elizabeth Bartlet, "several scholars have pointed out [that] Beethoven's trumpet call in "Fidelio" was inspired by Méhul's "Héléna"". Constantin, Count of Arles, has been accused of killing his father. He flees with his wife Héléna
The Royal Opera but none would take the permanent post. It was not until 1954 that Webster found a replacement for Rankl in Rafael Kubelík. Kubelík announced immediately that he was in favour of continuing the policy of singing in the vernacular: "Everything that the composer has written should be understood by the audience; and that is not possible if the opera is sung in a language with which they are not familiar". This provoked a public onslaught by Beecham, who continued to maintain that it was impossible to produce more than a handful of English-speaking opera stars, and that importing singers from