Le médecin malgré lui (opera)

Le médecin malgré lui (The Doctor in spite of himself; sometimes also called The Mock Doctor) is an opéra comique in three acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré after Molière's play, also entitled Le Médecin malgré lui.

It premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique, Paris on 15 January 1858. As the work uses spoken dialogue and verse taken directly from Molière's play, the Comédie-Française tried unsuccessfully to block performance of the opera. It was revived at the Opéra-Comique in 1872, 1886, 1902 and 1938; was seen in Hamburg, Stockholm and Warsaw in 1862; and in England between 1865 and 1891. On 25 November 1978 the opera received its 100th performance at the Opéra-Comique, conducted by Sylvain Cambreling and with Jean-Philippe Lafont, Jocelyne Taillon and Jules Bastin among the cast.

The opera has been rarely performed in recent years, although there have been radio broadcasts: from the BBC in the 1950s and French radio in the 1970s.

Yale Opera, in a partnership with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Yale French Department, performed the piece with the Erik Satie recitatives in April 2004 in New Haven, Connecticut. Utopia Opera in New York City performed the work in French with English supertitles during March 2013.

Still given from time to time in the French provinces, the Grand Théâtre de Genève mounted a production by Laurent Pelly in April 2016.

...
Wikipedia