Manon in the context of Daniel Auber

The Opéra-Comique (French pronunciation: [ɔpeʁa kɔmik]) is a Paris opera company which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with – and for a time took the name of – its chief rival, the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. It was also called the Théâtre-Italien up to about 1793, when it again became most commonly known as the Opéra-Comique. The company's official name is Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique, and its theatre, with a capacity of around 1,248 seats, sometimes referred to as the Salle Favart (the third on this site), is located at Place Boïeldieu in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier, one of the theatres of the Paris Opéra. The musicians and others associated with the Opéra-Comique have made important contributions to operatic history and tradition in France and to French opera. Its mission is to reconnect with its history and discover its unique repertoire to ensure production and dissemination of operas for the wider public. Mainstays of the repertory at the Opéra-Comique during its history have included works which have each been performed more than 1,000 times by the company: Cavalleria Rusticana, Le chalet, La dame blanche, Le domino noir, La fille du régiment, Lakmé, Manon, Mignon, Les noces de Jeannette, Le pré aux clercs, Tosca, La bohème, Werther and Carmen, the last having been performed more than 2,500 times.

Henri Meilhac (French pronunciation: [ɑ̃ʁi mɛjak]; 23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897) was a prolific French playwright and opera librettist, known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on comic operas with music by Jacques Offenbach. He also wrote occasionally for serious works including Georges Bizet's Carmen (with Halévy) and Jules Massenet's Manon.

Born in Paris, Meilhac began writing for a humorous magazine in 1852, and four years later he began a career as a playwright. In 1860 he collaborated for the first time with Halévy, an old schoolfriend, on a one-act comedy, presented at the Théâtre des Variétés. Over the next twenty-one years the two co-wrote fifty more stage works.

Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (French pronunciation: [ʒyl emil fʁedeʁik masnɛ]; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are Manon (1884) and Werther (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music.

While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the theatre and of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.