La mascotte

La mascotte (The Mascot) is a three-act opéra comique with music by Edmond Audran and words by Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot. The story concerns a farm girl who is a "mascotte": someone with the mystic power to bring good luck to all around her, so long as she remains a virgin. The opera opened at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris, on 28 December 1880, and had an initial run of 301 performances. Productions followed in other continental European countries, the Americas, Britain and Australia. The title of the piece introduced the word "mascotte" into standard French usage, "mascot" into English, and other variants of it into several more languages. Background and first performance In 1880 "mascotte" was a fairly new French slang word derived from the Provençal term mascoto, meaning "spell" or "bewitchment". At the time it was as unknown to standard French dictionaries as to English. According to Audran's son, the inspiration for La mascotte came from a trinket given to Audran's wife, who was from Provençe, by her seafaring brother; it was a good-luck charm that nobody but Madame Audran was allowed to touch: "Edmond, ne touche pas à ma mascotte". Audran conceived the idea that a person might also be a mascotte, and suggested this as a theme to his collaborators, the librettists Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot.