L'enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties (The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts) is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette.

After Colette chose Ravel to set the text to music, a copy was sent to him in 1916 while he was still serving in the war; however, the mailed script was lost.

In the next few years he was compelled to complete the work by Raoul Gunsbourg, director of the Monte Carlo Opera, who had insisted Ravel write a sequel to L'Heure espagnole.

[1] By this time Ravel had become newly inspired by the stage presentations of American musicals and revues by composers such as George Gershwin.

Now officially under the title of L'enfant et les sortilèges, the first performance took place on 21 March 1925 in Monte Carlo, conducted by Victor de Sabata, with ballet sequences choreographed by George Balanchine.

The original cast also included Henri Fabert as Vieillard Arithmétique, Warnerey as the clock and cat,[3] while at the Opéra-Comique, conducted by Albert Wolff and with choreography by Louise Virard, the cast included Germaine Féraldy, Mathilde Calvet, Madeleine Sibille, Roger Bourdin, René Hérent and Louis Guenot.

[5] An innovative production was filmed during the time of the Covid 19 epidemic, by Vopera20.com, founded to address the issues raised by the pandemic for the artistic community.

The scale of the cast and fantastic setting make the opera difficult to stage, which helps to explain why the work is not performed often.

Yet the orchestra plays a mostly secondary role to the sung melodies: Ravel explained that he was following the style of Gershwin and American operettas of the time.

His cat duet Duo miaulé is often seen as a parody of Wagner, which was quite controversial,[citation needed] although Arthur Honegger praised this piece in particular.