success".) and Le Cid (Paris, 1885). Other works in this category include Polyeucte (Paris, 1878) by Charles Gounod and Henry VIII by Camille Saint-Saëns (Paris, 1883). Ernest Reyer had started to compose his Sigurd years earlier, but, unable to get it premiered in Paris, settled for La Monnaie in Brussels (1884). What may have been one of the last successful French grand operas was by an unfamiliar composer, Émile Paladilhe: Patrie! (Paris, 1886). It ran up nearly 100 performances in Paris, and quite a few in Belgium, where the action takes place, but has since disappeared without a trace. Decline of French grand opera The expensive artifacts of grand opera (which also demanded expensive singers)—Les Huguenots was known as 'the night of the seven stars' because of its requirement of seven top-grade artistes—meant that they were economically the most vulnerable as new repertoire developed. Hence they lost pride of place at the Paris Opéra (especially when many of the original stage sets were lost in fire in the late 19th century). However, as late as 1917, the Gaîté-Lyrique devoted an entire season to the genre, including Halévy's La reine de Chypre. French grand opera today Some of these works – Guillaume Tell, La favorite, Les vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos, for instance – continue to have a place in the operatic repertoire. Even the pieces that are rarely staged are increasingly being resuscitated for compact disc recordings, and many are revived at opera festivals and by companies such as Palazetto Bru Zane. After virtually disappearing from the operatic repertory worldwide in the 20th century, Meyerbeer's major grand operas are once again being staged by leading European opera houses. Grand opera outside France Italy French grand opera was generally well received in Italy, where it was always performed in Italian translation. Italian operas with their own ballet started to become relatively common in the late 1860s and 1870s. Some of these, such as Il Guarany by the Brazilian composer Antônio Carlos Gomes were designated as "opera ballo" (i.e. 'danced opera'). Others, such as La Gioconda by Amilcare Ponchielli were not, although they qualified for the description. They constituted an evolution of grand opera. Verdi's Aida, despite having only four acts, corresponds in many ways to the grand opera formula. It has a historical setting, deals with 'culture clash' and contains several ballets as well as its extremely well known Grand March.