La mascotte (The Mascot) is a three-act opéra comique with music by Edmond Audran and words by Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot. The story concerns a farm girl who is a "mascotte": someone with the mystic power to bring good luck to all around her, so long as she remains a virgin. The opera opened at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Paris, on 28 December 1880, and had an initial run of 301 performances. Productions followed in other continental European countries, the Americas, Britain and Australia. The title of the piece introduced the word "mascotte" into standard French usage, "mascot" into English, and other variants of it into several more languages. Background and first performance In 1880 "mascotte" was a fairly new French slang word derived from the Provençal term mascoto, meaning "spell" or "bewitchment". At the time it was as unknown to standard French dictionaries as to English. According to Audran's son, the inspiration for La mascotte came from a trinket given to Audran's wife, who was from Provençe, by her seafaring brother; it was a good-luck charm that nobody but Madame Audran was allowed to touch: "Edmond, ne touche pas à ma mascotte". Audran conceived the idea that a person might also be a mascotte, and suggested this as a theme to his collaborators, the librettists Alfred Duru and Henri Chivot. La mascotte came near the beginning of Audran's career as a composer of works for the Parisian stage. His first big success, Les noces d'Olivette, opened at the Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens in 1879, and La mascotte was written for the same house. It opened on 28 December 1880 and ran for 472 performances, taking well over a million francs at the box office. At the premiere of the piece four principals were making their Paris debuts, all of them successfully. The two women were Marie Montbazon (later known as Marie Grisier-Montbazon), who played Bettina, and Mdlle Dinelli (Fiametta). The former was from a theatrical family well known in the French provinces, making her Paris debut at the age of 21; she went on to a successful career, starring in new works by Audran and others during the 1880s and 1890s. Dinelli as Fiametta was equally well received, but had a short career, curtailed by mental illness in 1883. The two male débutants were the tenors: the lyric Lamy and the comic Raucourt, both praised by the