Mendelssohn considered it the true model for a comic opera.
The musical composition, too, is nearly faultless in form and replete
with beauties. In this opera Cherubini anticipated the reforms of
Wagner, for he dispensed with the old system which made the drama a web
of beautiful melodies, and established his musical effects for the most
part by the vigor and charm of the choruses and concerted pieces. It
has been accepted as a model work by composers, and Beethoven was in the
habit of keeping it by him on his writing-table for constant study and
reference.

Spohr in his autobiography says: "I recollect, when the 'Deux Journees'
was performed for the first time, how, intoxicated with delight and
the powerful impression the work had made on me, I asked on that very
evening to have the score given me, and sat over it the whole night;
and that it was that opera chiefly that gave me my first impulse to
composition." Weber, in a letter from Munich written in 1812, says:
"Fancy my delight when I beheld lying upon the table of the hotel the
play-bill with the magic name _Armand_. I was the first person in the
theatre, and planted myself in the middle of the pit, where I waited
most anxiously for the tones which I knew beforehand would elevate and
inspire me. I think I may assert boldly that 'Les Deux Journees' is a
really great dramatic and classical work. Everything is calculated so
as to produce the greatest effect; all the various pieces are so much in
their proper place that you can neither omit one nor make any addition
to them. The opera displays a pleasing richness of melody, vigorous
declamation, and all-striking truth in the treatment of situations, ever
new, ever heard and retained with pleasure." Mendelssohn, too, writing
to his father of a performance of this opera, speaks of the enthusiasm
of the audience as extreme, as well as of his own pleasure as surpassing
anything he had ever experienced in a theatre. Mendelssohn, who never
completed an opera, because he did not find until shortly before
his death a theme which properly inspired him to dramatic creation,
corresponded with Planche, with the hope of getting from the latter a
libretto which should unite the excellences of "Fidelio" with those of
"Les Deux Journees." He found, at last, a libretto, which, if it did not
wholly satisfy him, at least overcame some of his prejudices, in a story
based on the Rhine myth of Lorelei. A fragment of it only was finished,