EDMOND

AUDRAN (1842-19o1)  , French musical composer, was born at Lyons on the r rth of April 1842 . He studied music at the Ecole Niedermeyer, where he won the prize for composition in 1859 . Two years later he accepted the post of organist of the church of St Joseph at Marseilles . He made his first appearance as a dramatic composer at Marseilles with L'Ours et le Pacha (1862), a musical version of one of Scribe's vaudevilles . This was followed by La Chercheuse d'Esprit (1864), a comic opera, also produced at Marseilles . Audran wrote a funeral march on the death of Meyerbeer, which was performed with some success, and made various attempts to win fame as a writer of sacred music . He produced a mass (Marseilles, 1893), an oratorio, La Sulamite (Marseilles, 1876), and numerous minor works, but he is known almost entirely as a composer of the lighter forms of opera . His first Parisian success was made with Les Noces d'Olivette (1879), a work which speedily found its way to London and (as Olivette) ran for more than a year at the Strand theatre (188o-1881) . Audran's music has, in fact, met with as much favour in England as in France, and all save a few of his works have been given in a more or less adapted form in London theatres . Besides those already mentioned, the following have been the most undeniably successful of Audran's many comic operas: Le Grand Mogol (Marseilles, 1876; Paris, 1884; London, as The Grand Mogul, 1884), La Mascotte (Paris, 188o; London, as The Mascotte, 1881), Gillette de Narbonne (Paris, 1882; London, as Gillette, 1883), La Cigale et la Fourmi (Paris, 1886; London, as La Cigale, 189o), Miss Helyett (Paris, 1890; London, as Miss Decima 1891), La Poupee (Paris, 1896; London, 1897) . Audran was one of the best of the successors of Offenbach . He had little of Offenbach's humour, but his music is distinguished by an elegance and a refinement of manner which lift it above the level of opera bouffe to the confines of genuine opera comique .

He was a fertile if not a very

original melodist, and his orchestration is full of variety, without being obtrusive or vulgar . Many of his operas, La Mascotte in particular, reveal a degree of musicianship which is rarely associated with the ephemeral productions of the lighter stage . He died in Paris on the 16th of August 1901 .