Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (1782-1871), the composer of La Muette de Portici (1828) and Fra Diavolo (1830), was once regarded as one of the great figures of music, a staple of the operatic repertoire in France, and indeed around the world. It is now almost impossible to understand the extent of his once universal fame, his influence on contemporary composers. His operas were in the theatre repertories of the world until the 1920s, and innumerable arrangements of them were published and sold everywhere. The ubiquity of his overtures—Masaniello, Fra Diavolo, The Bronze Horse, The Black Domino, The Crown Diamonds—once as popular as those of Rossini and Suppé, and the influence of his melodies and dance rhythms on piano and instrumental music, and on Romantic comic opera, was overwhelming. In his operas Auber avoided any excess in dramatic expression; all emotion and expressiveness, any vivid depiction of local milieu, were realized within his discreetly nuanced tones, always stamped with a Parisian elegance. His operas were loved in his native France until the years before the First World War, with Fra Diavolo and Le Domino noir last performed at the Opéra-Comique in 1909. Auber's career was a record of this success and appreciation. His appointment to the Institute (1829) was followed by other prestigious posts: as Director of Concerts at Court (1839), director of the Paris Conservatoire (1842), Musical Director of the Imperial Chapel (1852), and Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur (1861). During his lifetime, six biographies appeared contemporaneously, with another six appearing posthumously in the period up to 1914. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, reactions to Wagner, Impressionism and the Neo-Classicism of the Ballet Russe resulted in a growing lack of interest in the ancient traditions of opéra-comique, with its charming plots, melodic directness and rhythmic élan. Boieldieu, Hérold, Adam and Auber were relegated to the dustbin o
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