Background/Story
With thanks to the late Elizabeth Hughes who identified so many buttons in her Big Book of Buttons, we learn that this silver button (BBB plate 75, #26 in 1991 edition) commemorates the most popular 19th-century opera Les Huguenots (The Protestants) by Giacomo Meyerbeer that looks far back on a violently divisive political power struggle, the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572.
Depicted on this button is a Protestant soldier Marcel (fictitious protagonist) who fought and perished in the historical massacre of the French Calvinist Protestants in a wave of Catholic mob violence.
With thanks to late Elizabeth Hughes who identified so many buttons in her Big Book of Buttons, we learn that this silver button commemorated the most popular 19th-century opera Les Huguenots (The Protestants) by Giacomo Meyerbeer that looks far back on a violently divisive political power struggle, the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572. Enlarged photos of its hallmark, date mark, back view are available on the page, publicly viewable. Read about the opera and the historical event it depicted, and hear a recorded song of protagonist Marcel . . .
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