Les Quatre journées (Four Days) is a 1916 opera in four acts by Alfred Bruneau to a libretto he adapted from Émile Zola's short story "Les Quatre journées de Jean Gourdon"" from his 1874 collection Nouveaux contes à Ninon [fr],[1] one of several of Bruneau's operas based on texts by Zola.
Les Quatre journées premiered on 19 December 1916 at the Opéra-Comique, Paris.
[2] Bruneau dedicated the work to "Madame Paul de Choudens", his publisher's wife.
[3]: 2 The four acts are named Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter.
There is as well a mixed choir sometimes separated by gender (women and men) representing different minor roles throughout the opera: washerwomen and shepherds (act 1), dying soldiers (act 2; men only part), grape pickers (act 3), and peasants (act 4).