La Juive by JACQUES-FRANCOIS HALEVY

How would you like to be remembered? More specifically, what kind of accomplishment would you like to be remembered for? Raising your kids? Writing the great American novel? Starting a business? Ending a war?

Well, if history is any gage, you won’t really have much choice. Take the French composer, Jacques Halevy. Little more than a hundred years after his death, he’s remembered almost exclusively for one opera: “La Juive” - or “The Jewess.”

That makes Halevy what is often known as a “one hit wonder”: an artist remembered chiefly for a single work. And there have been lots of them. For some, the obscurity that followed their one triumph was well-deserved; the rest of their work just wasn’t much good. But for others, the fall from international fame to relative oblivion is harder to explain. Halevy is a good example. He wrote 38 operas, in widely varying styles. All we can remember is one of them.

But, if it’s any consolation to the long-dead composer, he’s not the only one, and “Classical composers” aren’t the only artists to fall victim to the public’s endless quest for something new, even at the expense of something good. Anyone heard from Don McLean lately? He scored an unlikely hit in 1971: an eight minute meditation on the history of rock n’ roll called “American Pie,” and followed that one up with another unlikely, but relatively minor hit, a song about Vincent Van Gough. He’s kept working in the nearly 30 years since then. But, he never scored another hit like “American Pie” and, today, most of us remember him for that song alone.

If you’re a film fan, you might remember a director named Michael Cimino. In 1974, he was assigned to a Viet Nam movie starring Robert DeNiro and Merryl Streep. The result was “The Deer Hunter,” which won a bunch of Oscars in 1978. Cimino went on to direct “Year Of the Dragon,” and other works of merit. Still, whenever his name is mentioned, the film that comes most easily to mind is “The Deer Hunter.”

You get the idea. Who knows why nobody bought Don McLean’s album “Prime Time,” or went to the theater for Cimino’s “Year of the Dragon.” Or why only one of Jacques Fromental Halevy’s thirty-odd operas survived into the 20th century? Well, it might be hard to say why Halevy’s three dozen OTHER operas didn’t make it. But we can tell you why this one is still around. It’s great stuff!

This week on At the Opera, we’ll learn why. Host Lou Santacroce talks with Benjamin Gampel, a medieval studies professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary; author and regular guest Dr. Phylis Chesler will do a little psychoanalysis of Halevy’s characters; and conductor Eve Queler points out the opera’s musical landmarks.

After At the Opera, stay tuned for a performance of LA JUIVE by Opera Orchestra of New York from Carnegie Hall, on NPR World of Opera with Steve Curwood.

Music featured this week on At the Opera: