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The articles in this special issue circulated in draft form at a conference on the issue's theme. The conference was convened at King's College London under the auspices of Roger Parker's European research Council-funded project, Music in London, 1800-51. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments on this issue; in addition, I owe a debt of thanks to the conference's coordinator, Angela Waplington; the discussants (Dana Gooley,

When the grands opéras of Giacomo Meyerbeer were introduced to London audiences as a cluster in the mid-1800s, critics identified moments of understated musical and dramatic expression, and made little mention of more sensational dimensions, such as their impressive staging. With a focus on the 1849 staging of Le Prophète at the brand-new Royal Italian Opera in London, this article demonstrates that numerous critics were keen to endorse this new opera house, where most of the composer’s works were mounted, and that, to this end, they zeroed in on the most bare and restrained elements in his works so as to invest them with moral and intellectual relevance for Victorian audiences. Approaching Le Prophète as various London critics did is to see it anew and to consider alternatives to recent narratives which have taken material excess as a starting point for understanding the success of Meyerbeer’s grands opéras on the continent.

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