ABSTRACT
EIGHTEEN sixty-seven was the year of the Universal Exposition in Paris. The visitors who came that spring to see the pavilions erected in the Champs de Mars also saw a new, Haussmann-ized city of wide boulevards, proud, pleasure-loving Parisians, and masses of fireworks and fêtes. Everyone crowded the boulevard theatres, the Opéra, with its new façade, and the waltz concerts conducted by a handsome Viennese visitor, Johann Strauss II. As the Palais-Royal readied its production of La Vie Parisienne for an October 1866 opening, Hippolyte Cogniard, the manager of the Variétés, demanded a new piece from Offenbach and Meilhac and Halévy to open in time for the Exposition. The librettists commenced work on La Chambre rouge, but by mid-October Halévy would refer to the new work, with satisfaction, as La Grande-Duchesse. Gérolstein was added later, after the censors insisted there be no misunderstanding with Luxembourg. Gérolstein was a fictitious place created by the novelist Eugène Sue.
