Anniversary: the 150th anniversary of Maurice Ravel's birth and the centenary of the premiere of L'Enfant et les sortilèges.
L’Enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties (The Child and the Spells: A Lyric Fantasy in Two Parts) is an opera in one act, with music by Maurice Ravel to a libretto by Colette. It is Ravel's second opera, his first being L’Heure espagnole. Composed between 1917 and 1925, L’Enfant et les sortilèges premiered in Monte Carlo in 1925 under the baton of Victor de Sabata.
After being invited to write a musical work, Colette completed the text in just eight days. Several composers were suggested to her to set the libretto to music, but she was excited only by the prospect of Ravel.
Ravel’s colourful orchestration employs a wide range of unusual instruments and abounds in witty references — quoting fashionable dances of the 1920s, such as ragtime and foxtrot, throughout.