Adèle de Ponthieu (La Borde and Berton)

Adèle de Ponthieu is an opera by the French composers Jean-Benjamin de La Borde and Pierre Montan Berton, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique, Paris (the Paris Opera) on 1 December 1772. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in three acts. The libretto was written by Jean-Paul-André Razins de Saint-Marc, after a tragedy by Pierre-Antoine de La Place, staged at the Comédie-Française in 1757.^[1]

The opera had little success in its first run and was only revived in 1775 in five acts, for 38 performances, before being withdrawn for good.^[2] The three-act libretto, however, was later set by Niccolò Piccinni in 1781.

Roles

Cast	Voice type	Premiere 1 December 1772
Guillaume, Count of Ponthieu	basse-taille (bass-baritone)	Henri Larrivée
Adèle, the Count's daughter	soprano	Sophie Arnould
Alphonse, a foreign knight	bass-baritone	Nicolas Gélin
Raimond de Mayenne, a relative of the Count and a humble squire	haute-contre	Joseph Legros
Alise, Adèle's confidante	soprano	Mlle Châteauneuf
Juges du camp (judges of the camp)	2 bass-baritones, haute-contre, taille (baritenor)	Cassaignade, de la Suze, Cavalier, Méon
Un berger (a shepherd)	bass-baritone	Durand
Une bergère (a shepherdess)	soprano	Mlle Beaumesnil (stage name of Henriette-Adélaïde de Villars)
Une jongleuse (a female jongleur)	soprano	Mlle Beaumesnil
Chorus: The court of the Count, knights, squires, king of arms, heralds, officers of the joust, fiddlers, male and female jongleurs, shepherds, shepherdesses