Edmond Audran

Achille Edmond Audran (12 April 1840[1][2] – 17 August 1901) was a French composer best known for several internationally successful comic operas and operettas.

After beginning his career in Marseille as an organist, Audran composed religious music and began to write works for the stage in the 1860s and 1870s.

[3] He made his first appearance as a dramatic composer at Marseilles with L'Ours et le Pacha (1862), a musical version of one of Eugène Scribe's vaudevilles.

[3][6] While still in Marseilles, Audran wrote a half dozen operettas, the most successful of which was Le grand mogol (1877), with a libretto by Henri Chivot.

[3] He moved to Paris in 1879, "where at first he occupied a humble lodging in a garret",[5] but he was soon prosperous, with the success of Les noces d'Olivette (1879), which had "an enormous vogue".

Of one of his collaborations, a critic wrote, "I might dispose of the new three-act comic opera brought out at the Bouffes-Parisiens by simply stating that its title is Pervenche, that its libretto is by MM.

Chivot and Duru, its score by M. Edmond Audran, and that both authors and composer have adhered so closely to their well-known style as to necessitate no further call on your space.

The Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins states, "The French operetta La Mascotte by Edmond Audran had its première on 29 December 1880.