''La bonne d'enfant'' (''The Nanny'') is an opérette bouffe, in one act by

Jacques Offenbach Jacques Offenbach (; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a p ...

to a French

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

by Eugène Bercioux. It was first performed at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

on 14 October 1856. Offenbach's early operettas were small-scale one-act works, since the law in France limited musical theatre works (other than

grand opera Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and Orchestra, orchestras. The original productions consisted of spectacular design and stage effects with plots normally based on o ...

) to one-act pieces with no more than three singers and, perhaps, some mute character

In 1858, this law was changed, and Offenbach was able to offer full-length operettas, beginning with ''

Orpheus in the Underworld ''Orpheus in the Underworld'' and ''Orpheus in Hell'' are English names for (), a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux, Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was first performed as a two-act "op ...

''. The piece was seen in 1857 at the St James's Theatre in London, and in Vienna in 1862 with Tostée as Dorothée; it was subsequently produced there in Hungarian.Gänzl K. ''The Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre.'' Blackwell, Oxford, 1994.

Roles

Synopsis

Dorothée is tired of being a nanny and wants to marry to become the mistress of her own house. She has two suitors: Mitouflard, the fireman and Gargaillou, the chimneysweep. During an evening when her employers are out of the house, both gentlemen try to convince her to marry them, which leads to a number of comic situations. She ends up deciding to marry 'Brin d'Amour', the trumpeter of the Royal Dragoons, but tells her suitors that she will invite them to her wedding.

References

;Notes

External links

The libretto in French as submitted to the French Censors before the premièreInformation about the première date and location
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bonne d'enfant Operas by Jacques Offenbach French-language operas Operas One-act operas Opérettes 1856 operas