Edmond Audran

Achille Edmond Audran (12 April 1840 17 August 1901) was a French composer best known for several internationally successful comic operas and operettas. After beginning his career in Marseille as an organist, Audran composed religious music and began to write works for the stage in the 1860s and 1870s. Among these, Le grand mogol (1877) was the most popular and was later revived in Paris, London and New York. In 1879 he moved to Paris, where some of his pieces achieved considerable success both in France and abroad, including Les noces d’Olivette (1879), La mascotte (1880), Gillette de Narbonne (1882), La cigale et la fourmi (1886), Miss Helyett (1890) and La poupée (1896). Most of his works are now neglected, but La mascotte has been revived occasionally and has been recorded for the gramophone. Early life and career Audran was born in Lyon, the son of Marius-Pierre Audran (1816–87), who had a career as a tenor at the Opéra-Comique. He studied music at the École Niedermeyer under Jules Duprato, where he won the prize for composition in 1859. In 1861 his family moved to Marseille, where his father accepted the post of singing teacher, later becoming director of the conservatory. Au