An Opera That Sparked a Revolution

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With pictures by James Ensor and Alexander Kluge. The opera The Mute Girl of Portici tells the story of a young mute woman in Naples who is seduced by a prince. The prince abandons her and marries a princess. The mute woman has to watch and cannot protest. This opera by Auber is the only one in which no soprano sings. At its premiere in Brussels in 1831, the audience was so outraged by the girl who suffers and cannot express it, that they marched to the Palace of Justice and triggered the Belgian Revolution—one of the few liberal revolutions.