La colombe

(The Dove) is an opéra comique in two acts by Charles Gounod with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on the poem by Jean de La Fontaine, itself after a tale (V,9) in The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. It premiered in a one-act version at the Theater der Stadt in Baden-Baden on 3 August 1860, where it was well received and performed four times. It was presented in a revised two-act version, with additional music, on 7 June 1866 by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris. Performance history Gounod's previous opera, Philémon et Baucis, also with a text by Barbier and Carré based on a story by La Fontaine, had originally been commissioned for the summer season of 1859 by Édouard Bénazet, the director of the theatre and casino at Baden-Baden. When the political situation between France and Germany deteriorated in June, Gounod's opera was preemptively withdrawn to avoid potential negative reaction from German audiences, and it ended up being premiered in an expanded form in February 1860 by Léon Carvalho at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris. To compensate Bénazet for his loss, Gounod quickly composed La colombe during a two-week period for the following summer. (The score is dedicated to Bénazet.) Although the original one-act version received an ovation in Baden-Baden, it did not do particularly well in its expanded two-act revision in 1866 at the Opéra-Comique, receiving a total of only 29 performances.