Maurice Ravel - 5 O’Clock Foxtrot, from “L’enfant et les sortilèges“ (audio + sheet music)

Although the finished product would not appear until 1925, Maurice Ravel had begun planning the opera (really a fantasie lyrique) L’Enfant et les sortilèges with librettist Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (normally just credited as “Colette“) as early as 1918. The partnership was neither particularly natural nor especially comfortable for either the composer or the writer, but, in the end they succeeded in producing an endearing and enduring theater-piece that many feel to be among Ravel’s most thoroughly impressive works. Nearly half a decade was spent on the actual composition of the opera, and it was only when an inflexible premiere date was set that Ravel actually forced himself to wrap the work up; it was premiered at the Opéra de Monte Carlo on March 21, 1925, to warm, but not effusive, public and critical response. It was no doubt Colette’s ability to seamlessly and unpretentiously blend together innocence and suavity that first attracted Ravel to her work. While Ravel