La caverne (The Cavern) is an opera by the French composer Étienne Méhul. It takes the form of a comédie en prose in three acts. It premiered at the Opéra-Comique, Paris on 5 December 1795. The libretto, by Nicolas-Julien Forgeot, is based on incidents from the novel Gil Blas by Alain-René Lesage. Méhul's opera enjoyed only limited success, with 22 performances. Arthur Pougin ascribes this to the competition from Le Sueur's opera of the same title, based on the same events from Gil Blas, first staged at the Théâtre Feydeau in February 1793. Le Sueur's La caverne was one of the most popular works of the 1790s. With such a rival, Pougin writes, "failure was almost certain" for Méhul's work, despite the excellence of the cast. Source: Wikipedia (en)