Le petit Faust is an opéra bouffe in four acts which burlesques the drama Faust by Goethe and the opera of the same name by Gounod. The music of the piece is by Hervé, with a text by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux and Adolphe Jaime. The work had its premiere in Paris at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques on 23 April 1869. Background Gounod's opera Faust, loosely based on episodes from Goethe's drama, had first appeared in Paris in 1859 and had achieved great popularity. Hervé had produced a number of successful operettas and with this work he and his librettists took the story and added zany comic twists to it. Main roles Synopsis Act 1 Dr. Faust's schoolroom Dr. Faust, an elderly professor at a boarding school, is experiencing great difficulty in keeping his unruly students including Siébel in order. The students pass naughty notes to each other and cover their course work with obscene drawings but use their physical charms to avoid punishment. Valentin enters with other soldiers- he is about to go to war and has brought his sister Marguerite to the school so she can stay there in his absence. Dr. Faust, drawn to Marguerite's supposed innocence and her beauty, accepts her as a student even though she is over school age. Mephisto, the devil, appears to Faust and offers him youth, good looks and wealth in exchange for his powers of reasoning - not his soul, as in Goethe and Gounod, for as the devil says in this version "Everyone sells that these days without even signing a contract". Marguerite, meanwhile, not as pure and innocent as all that, has run away from the school to go to London to teach the British how to dance the can-can. Faust, now young and rich, in love and not knowing where Marguerite has gone, determines to search the world to find her again, vowing to be hers forever. Act 2 A nightclub Students, pleasure-seekers, and the demimonde are enjoying a night out, dancing and drinking and having fun. Faust enters, tired of a life of empty pleasure and seeking Marguerite. Mephisto has let it be known that Faust has a vast fortune to bestow on Marguerite, and girls claiming to be Marguerite appear from Japan, Italy, France and all over the world, but Faust rejects them all as fake. However, the real Marguerite does turn up at the club, back