Plate: PL. 230

"Louise (the opera, music and text by Gustave Charpentier), although a great success, initiated no little controversy in its time. It is the story of a working class girl who falls in love with a poet and goes to live with him, to the horror of her parents. They contrive to get her back, but their rigid values and drab existence are pitted against the bohemian life of Montemartre. Montemartre wins, Louise returns to her lover and the opera ends with her father shaking his fist at the city, crying mournfully, 'Oh, Paris!'

Charpentier was lifted out of poverty by the success of Louise. He broke with operatic traditions in portraying the seamy side of contemporary life and his heroine was the symbol of a new freedom in the new century.
The poster shows us the third act setting, with the two lovers tenderly embracing in their garden on the heights of Montemarte. Spread out below them, lights twinkling in the dusk, is the city some have called the real protagonist of the opera...Paris "(French Opera, 22)

" Rochegrosse honed his illustrative technique on the books of his era's literary giants: Theophile Gautier, Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, and others. He was also house artist for the magazine La Vie Parisienne. Here, the romantic sweep of his presentation, however, obscures the controversial stir the operetta created in its day from the contemporary eye. "'Louise' . . . is the story of a working girl who falls in love with a poet and goes to live with him, to the horror of her parents. They contrive to get her back, but their rigid values and drab existence are pitted against the bohemian life of Montmartre. Montmartre wins, Charpentier . . . broke with operatic tradition in portraying the seamy side of contemporary life and his heroine was the symbol of a new freedom in the new century" (Rennert, PAI-XXXVII, 256)