L’Africaine is Meyerbeer’s uncompleted work of a lifetime. He started working on the score in 1837 together with the librettist, Eugène Scribe, and continued to revise it in 1841, 1845 and 1863. However, it befell François-Joseph Fétis, the eminent musicologist (whom Verdi dismissed as an “utterly naïve composer”) to complete the final version of the opera following Meyerbeer’s death in 1864. Owing to its various amendments over the years, the opera displays inconsistent sections, and the exotic plot, based on the fictional love story between the explorer Vasco da Gama and Sélika, the African queen-slave, is somewhat illogical at times. However, the opera itself combines all the features of eighteenth-century French opera, in particular the lavish, spectacular performance of grand opéra with the more intimate late nineteenth century drame lyrique.