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English title : 'The Child and The Enchantments : A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts'. An opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Front cover artwork by André Hellé, who here reveals both his talent and his affinity for the story and music of L'Enfant. Quarter pigskin leather with marbled paper over boards, title stamped in gilt onto leather labels within a decorative, three compartment spine, small folio (12-1/4 inches [31 cm] tall), all edges stained red, pp. [1 leaf - a watermarked blank], chromolithographed front cover [verso blank], [4 - blanks], [i - title page w. "Imp. A. Mounot - Paris" printed at foot], [ii - a list of characters], 1-101 [musical score for vocals and piano], [1 - blank], bottom cover [both sides blank], [1 - a watermarked blank], front and rear heavy weight decorative endpapers. Page 101 with plate mark number "D. & F. 10,699" printed at foot, words and artist's notations printed in French throughout, with one verse noted "How's your mug? [p. 18-20] in English. Volume is worn with edge wear and bumps to corners, spine ends are pulled with resultant short cracks to leather joints, some loss to leather labels, text is slightly toned - more so near edges, a single leaf [p. 29/30] having a c. three inch closed tear at foot, else clean and unmarked. While the binding shows some honest wear from use, the musical score itself remains well protected and near fine within it's protective covers. "Nowhere is Maurice Ravel's ability to conjure up the world of a child more vividly revealed than in the web of fairytale and reality, imagination and intense sensation that is woven through his opera L'Enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Enchantments). The opera's libretto, by the French novelist Colette, was drafted following a commission from Jacques Rouché, the visionary director of the Opéra de Paris. In mid-March 1916 Colette sent her sketch to Rouché, who offered it first to Paul Dukas and then to Stravinsky; barely a fortnight earlier, Ravel had left for the Western Front as an army driver. That September Ravel, serving somewhere near Verdun, was offered the third refusal, but although a copy of Colette's text was mailed, it never reached him. Ravel finally received and accepted the commission only in the spring of 1917, and it was not until well after the end of World War One that he began work. â Oh! Cher ami, when, oh when, the Divertissement pour ma.petite-fille?' wrote Colette to Ravel in the summer of 1923. If he didn't get a move on, this work that she had first conceived as a â Divertissement for my daughter', was going to turn into one for her granddaughter (petite-fille) instead. In the spring of 1924, with a première for the new opera confirmed at the Théâtre de Monte Carlo (rather than in Paris, as originally foreseen), Ravel seriously set to work on completing L'Enfant. That summer he wrote, â I'm only leaving the job to take some food, or to walk a few kilometres in the forest when I feel as if my head's going to explode,' and in November, â I'm seeing nobody but my frogs, my Negros, my shepherds and other insects.' Variously beset by flu, exhaustion, concert tours, an infected finger, drawn-out contractual negotiations, and the travails of orchestration and proofing, his months of frantic effort eventually paid off. The première took place in Monte Carlo as planned on 21 March 1925, and was a triumph. Arthur Honegger called the opera â a brilliant success', and the ecstatic reviewer of the Journal de Monaco wrote that â M[onsieur] Ravel was the object of prolonged ovations, when, from the heights of the royal box, he appeared three times.to bow to the audience.' As the curtain rises on L'Enfant et les sortilèges, a pair of wandering oboes evokes the boredom and restlessness of a child stuck at his desk: fed up with his lessons, he declares he would rather go for a walk, eat up all the cakes, yell at everyone. His mother enters and reproache.
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