Edmond Audran

Edmond Audran (11 April 1842 - 17 August 1901) was a French composer best known for several internationally successful operettas, including "Les noces d'Olivette" (1879), "La mascotte" (1880), "Gillette de Narbonne" (1882), "La cigale et la fourmi" (1886), "Miss Helyett" (1890), and "La poupée" (1896).

Life and career

He was born at Lyon, the son of Marius-Pierre Audran (1816-87), who had a career as a tenor at the Opéra Comique. Audran studied music at the Ecole Niedermeyer under Jules-Laurent Duprato, where he won the prize for composition in 1859. In 1861 his family to Marseilles, where his father became a singing teacher and later director of the conservatory. Audran accepted the post of organist of the church of St Joseph there. For that church, he wrote religious music including, in 1873, a mass that was also performed in Paris at St Eustache. He made his first appearance as a dramatic composer at Marseilles with "L'Ours et le Pacha" (1862), a musical version of one of Scribe's vaudevilles. This was followed by "La Chercheuse d'Esprit" (1864), a comic opera, also produced at Marseille.

Audran wrote a funeral march on the death of Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was performed with some success, some songs in the Provençal dialect, and various other sacred pieces. He produced a mass (Marseille, 1893), an oratorio, "La Sulamite" (Marseille, 1876), and numerous minor works, but he is known almost entirely as a composer of light opera. His first Parisian success was made with "Les Noces d'Olivette" (1879), a work which speedily found its way to London (as "Olivette") in an English translation by H. B. Farnie and ran for more than a year at the Strand Theatre (1880-81).

Audran's music has met with as much favour in England as in France, and all save a few of his works have been given in English adaptations in London theatres. Besides those already mentioned, the following have been the most undeniably successful of Audran's many comic operas: "Le grand mogol" (Marseille, 1876; Paris, 1884; London, as "The Grand Mogul", 1884), "La mascotte" (Paris, 1880; London, as "The Mascotte", 1881), "Gillette de Narbonne" (Paris, 1882; London, as "Gillette", 1883), "La cigale et la fourmi" (the grasshopper and the ant) (Paris, 1886; London, as "La Cigale", 1890; English version by F. C. Burnand), "Miss Helyett" (Paris, 1890; London, as "Miss Decima" 1891; English version by Burnand), "La poupée" (Paris, 1896; London, 1897).

Audran was one of the best of the successors of Jacques Offenbach. He had little of Offenbach's humour, but his music is distinguished by an elegance and a refinement of manner which lift it above the level of opera bouffe to the confines of genuine opera comique. He was a fertile if not a very original melodist, and his orchestration is full of variety, without being obtrusive or vulgar. Many of his operas, "La mascotte" in particular, reveal a degree of musicianship which is rarely associated with the ephemeral productions of the lighter stage. "La mascotte" is credited with bringing the word "mascot" into the English language.

Audran died in Tierceville in Seine-et-Oise.

Operettas

* "La chercheuse d'esprit" (1864)
* "Le grand Mogol" (1877)
* "Les noces d'Olivette" (1879)
* "La mascotte" (1880)
* "Gillette de Narbonne" (1882)
* "Les pommes d'or" (1883)
* "La dormeuse éveillée" (1883)
* "Serment d'amour" (1886)
* "La cigale et la fourmi" (1886)
* "La fiancée des verts poteaux" (1887)
* "Le puits qui parle" (1888)
* "La petite fronde" (1888)
* "La fille à Cacolet" (1889)
* "L'Œuf rouge" (1890)
* "Miss Helyett" (1890)
* "L'oncle Célestin" (1891)
* "Article de Paris" (1892)
* "La sainte Freya" (1892)
* "Madame Suzette" (1893)
* "Mon prince" (1893)
* "L'enlèvement de la Toledad" (1894)
* "La duchesse de Ferrare" (1895)
* "La poupée" (1896)
* "Monsieur Lohengrin" (1896)
* "Les petites femmes" (1897)
* "Les sœurs Gaudichard" (1898)

References

*1911
*Traubner, R. "Operetta: a Theatrical History" (1983) New York

External links

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