Achille Edmond Audran was a French composer best known for several internationally successful comic operas and operettas.
Photo of Audran by Pierre Petit, Bibliothèque nationale de France
Poster for the 1884 production of Le grand mogol in Paris.
Sheet music for the gavotte from La cigale et la fourmi
La cigale et la fourmi is a three-act opéra comique, with music by Edmond Audran and words by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru. Loosely based on Jean de La Fontaine's version of Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, the opera shows the lives of two young women, one prudent, like the ant, the other improvident and reckless, like the grasshopper. Unlike the Aesop fable this version has a happy ending, with the "ant" looking after the destitute "grasshopper".
Sheet music for the gavotte from La cigale et la fourmi, the most popular number
Act I: Thérèse and Charlotte at front centre
Thérèse's dream – rejected by Charlotte
Programme for English premiere, 1890