the singers who had been engaged were the baritone Auguste Meillet, his wife, the soprano Marie-Stéphanie Meillet (née Meyer); and the bass Marcel Junca. Cahier des charges The company's new cahier des charges (license) was liberal. It called for new French operas with spoken dialogue (opéra comique) or sung recitative, prose or verse librettos, and with or without ballets. No single composer could have more than six new acts presented in one season (acts were counted rather than works). Preference was to be given to Prix de Rome winners up to two years after the award. In addition, up to two translated foreign works were permitted, as well as French works ten years after their premiere, and any number of public domain works, so long as these did not exceed 33% of the number of new acts presented over a two-year period. The company had the right to revive any works it had already produced, to encourage the company to establish its own repertory. As the company did not receive any state subsidy before 1864, revivals of popular, established works were critical to its financial survival. Opening and first season The new opera house opened on 27 September 1851 with the premiere of a 3-act opéra-comique with music by Xavier Boisselot called Mosquita la sorcière. The libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Gustave Vaëz. Hector Berlioz, who reviewed the performance, was not particularly taken with the music of Boisselot, but gave the chorus high marks. The orchestra conducted by Varney was praised as young and energetic by the Moniteur Universel. The opera was performed a total of 21 times that year but only 4 times the next. Boisselot's new opera was followed the next night with Le barbier de Séville (a French adaptation by Castil-Blaze of Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Ferdinando Paer's Le maître de chapelle, both more reliable money-makers. The company performed the former a total of 126 times, and the latter, 182 times. In fact this was to become the pattern later in the history of the company: occasional new operas among numerous French language revivals of popular foreign works. Perhaps the most successful new French work that first season was Felicien David's La perle du Brésil, first performed on 22 November. Although the production was apparently not up to snuff (Berlioz reported that it was "sometimes good, often bad and in all, of little advantage