THOMAS – Polonaise, from the opera ‘Mignon’ – CELLO AND PIANO

Other Identification:
Ambroise Thomas was born at Metz, August 5, 1811; died at Paris, February 12, 1896. He studied at the Paris Conservatory, where, in 1832, he won the Grand Prix de Rome. In 1871, he became director of the conservatory, being considered Auber’s immediate successor, although the post was held for a few days that year by the communist Salvador Daniel, who was killed in battle, May 23rd.
Mignon is an opéra comique (or opera in its second version) in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce’s “The Dead” (Dubliners) and Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House. The first performance was at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17th November 1866. The piece proved popular: more than 100 performances took place by the following July, the 1,000th was given there on 13th May 1894, and the 1,500th on 25th May, 1919.
The opera was also adapted and translated into German for performance in Berlin. The German critics were unhappy with the opera’s alterations to the Goethe original, so Thomas composed a shorter finale with a tragic ending, in which Mignon falls dead in the arms of Wilhelm. This ending was an attempt to make the story of the opera somewhat more similar in tone to the tragic outcome of Goethe’s. Yet more changes – despite his success in Paris with the French version, Thomas was asked to revise the work for the first performance at the Drury Lane Theatre in London on 5 July 1870. This version was given in Italian with recitatives (instead of spoken dialogue).
The Polonaise – “Jes suis Titania” comes from from Act II, Scene 2 of the opera. Johnstone takes an existing flute solo transcription to transcribe for cello.