Le roi malgré lui is an opéra-comique in three acts by Emmanuel Chabrier of 1887 with an original libretto by Emile de Najac and Paul Burani. The opera is revived occasionally, but has not yet found a place in repertory.
Poster for the premiere by Jules Chéret
The title page of the vocal score of Le roi malgré lui
Fire at the second Salle Favart on 25 May 1887 (engraving).
Henri de Valois in Polish dress
Alexis-Emmanuel Chabrier was a French Romantic composer and pianist. His bourgeois family did not approve of a musical career for him, and he studied law in Paris and then worked as a civil servant until the age of thirty-nine while immersing himself in the modernist artistic life of the French capital and composing in his spare time. From 1880 until his final illness he was a full-time composer.
Chabrier in 1882
Chabrier's birthplace in Ambert
Chabrier by Édouard Detaille (1873)
Chabrier, 1880, by Manet, Ordrupgaard Museum, Denmark