La colombe

La Colombe (The Dove) is an opéra comique in two acts by Charles Gounod with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on the poem Le Faucon by Jean de la Fontaine. It premiered in a one-act version at the Theater der Stadt in Baden-Baden on 3 August 1860, where it was well received and performed four times. It was revived on 7 June 1866 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris in an expanded two-act version with additional music added by Gounod.

Performance history

Gounod's previous opera, Philémon et Baucis, also with a text by Barbier and Carré based on a story by La Fontaine, had originally been commissioned for the summer season of 1859 by Édouard Bénazet, the director of the theatre and casino at Baden-Baden. When the political situation between France and Germany deteriorated in June, Gounod's opera was preemptively withdrawn to avoid potential negative reaction from German audiences, and it ended up being premiered in an expanded form in February by Léon Carvalho at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. To compensate Bénazet for his loss, Gounod quickly composed La colombe during a two-week period for the following summer. (The score is dedicated to Bénazet.) Although it received an ovation in Baden-Baden, it did not do particularly well in its expanded version in the 1866 revival at the Opéra-Comique, receiving a total of only 29 performances. It was presented in Brussels on 5 December 1867, in Stockholm in Swedish on 11 February 1868, at the Crystal Palace in London on 20 September 1870 (as The Pet Dove in an English translation by H. B. Farnie), in Copenhagen in Danish on 27 April 1873 and Prague in Czech on 22 September 1873. It was presented in Bologna in Italian and again in Paris in French in 1912. Diaghilev presented it on 1 January 1923 in Monte Carlo, with recitatives composed by the 24-year-old Francis Poulenc replacing the spoken dialogue.

La Colombe

La Colombe may refer to:

Related

La Colombe, Loir-et-Cher

La Colombe is a commune in the Loir-et-Cher department of central France.

See also

Colombe

Colombe is a commune in the Isère department in southeastern France.

Population

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References

Colombe (play)

Colombe is a play in four acts by French dramatist Jean Anouilh, written in 1950, created at the Théâtre de l'Atelier on February 10, 1951 in a mise-en-scène, set and costumes by André Barsacq and published in 1951 at Éditions de la Table ronde in Pièces brillantes.

Plot summary

A large self-centred actress lacking maternal fibre must face the return of her son Julien, who is intransigent and jealous of his brother Armand who his mother always babied. He refused any special favours in order to escape his three years of military service that awaited him, so he leaves his young, naïve and submissive wife Colombe. The mother decides to hire Colombe at the theatre. The woman would jump with joy, happy at becoming her own woman, and would break up with Julien.

Théâtre de l'Atelier, 1951