• Giacomo Meyerbeer. Grand opera in five acts. 1835.
• Libretto by Eugène Scribe and Emile Deschamps.
• First performance at the Paris Opéra on 29th February 1836.

At a banquet at the château of the Count de Nevers, Raoul is among the guests, with his staunch Huguenot servant Marcel. He is in love with a girl that he once helped but of whose identity he has no idea. Marcel's Lutheran hymn and Raoul's Huguenot battle-narrative merely amuse the Catholic guests. The Count leaves the company to join a lady in the garden, one whom Raoul recognises at once as the girl he had helped. Urbain, page to Marguerite de Valois, takes Raoul, blindfold, to meet his mistress. She, however, has had the idea of solving religious divisions in France by arranging the marriage of Raoul and Valentine, who, it now seems clear, is engaged to the Count de Nevers. When Valentine is brought in, Raoul refuses any such match, thinking that she already has a liaison with the Count de Nevers. Bloodshed is narrowly averted, when her father, the Count de Saint-Bris, resents the imputation. In the third act Valentine and de Nevers are to marry. Catholic and Huguenot soldiers add to the unease of the situation outside the Paris chapel. Marcel brings a challenge from Raoul to the Count of Saint- Bris, whose friends plan to murder Raoul, but Valentine reveals the plot, and in the event there is open conflict between Catholic and Huguenot supporters. It is only now that Raoul realises that the reason for Valentine's meeting in the garden with de Nevers was to seek release from her engagement. He visits Valentine and, hidden, overhears the Catholic plan for the massacre of St Bartholomew, a plot in which de Nevers refuses any part, breaking his sword and being taken prisoner. In spite of her open protestations of love, Raoul rushes away to warn his friends of the massacre which has already begun. Taking refuge with Marcel and Valentine, they are all three killed by Saint-Bris, unaware that he is killing his own daughter, now a Huguenot herself.

An important example of French grand opéra , Les Huguenots is characteristic of the genre in its grandiose conception and its serious treatment of a historical religious conflict. Raoul's Huguenot account of Catholic discomfiture, Piff, paff, piff, paff, sung at the banquet given by the Count de Nevers, has provided a baritone concert item, with the Queen's O beau pays de la Touraine (O fair country of Touraine). Valentine and Raoul have a notable love duet in O ciel, où courez-vous? (O heaven, where are you running?) after the Consecration of the Swords in the fourth act, as adherents of the Catholic party plan to massacre the Huguenots. The length of the opera has led to various abridgements, notably in the omission of the fifth act and the joining of the second to the first act, making a three-act work.