Les Dragons de Villars

Les dragons de Villars is an opéra-comique in three acts by Aimé Maillart to a libretto by Lockroy and Eugène Cormon. The story of the opera was said to have been borrowed from La Petite Fadette by Georges Sand, updated by the librettists to the time of Louis XIV. It was premiered by the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris on 19 September 1856.

The piece was first offered to the director of the Opéra-Comique, Émile Perrin, who found the piece too dark, even after having the composer play some of it to him. It was next offered to one of the Seveste brothers at the Théâtre-Lyrique, who also rejected it, as did their successor Pierre Pellegrin. Some years later, the authors met Léon Carvalho, who had just taken over the direction of the Théâtre-Lyrique, and who accepted the completed piece without reading a word or hearing a note.

The premiere of Les dragons de Villars was very successful. It was the debut of Juliette Borghèse, who was said "to have created an enthusiasm" as Rose Friquet. The opera, which had notched up 153 performances at the Théâtre Lyrique by 1863, was to become popular throughout Europe, as well as being staged in New Orleans (1859) and New York (1868). It reached Mauritius in 1872. Revived at the Opéra-Comique in 1868, it achieved 377 performances at that theatre by 1917. A production was also mounted at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris on 3 June 1935.Mahler conducted the piece in Budapest in 1888, and Furtwängler conducted it in Strasbourg in 1910. The opera was in the repertory of the Opéra de la Monnaie in Brussels from 1942 to 1953. More recently, it was staged in 1986 in Montpellier.

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