Auguste Mermet

Auguste Mermet (; 5 January 1810 – 4 July 1889) was a French opera composer.

Biography Born in Brussels, Mermet was the son of an officer in the Grande Armée and originally intended to have a military career, but after learning to play the flute and later privately studying music composition with Jean-François Le Sueur and Fromental Halévy, abandoned the army in favour of music.

In his youth, he already composed a two-act opéra-comique, La Bannière du roi, with a libretto by Pierre Carmouche, which was first performed at Versailles in April 1835. Tchaikovsky used Mermet's libretto as one of the sources for his opera The Maid of Orleans.

Hugh Macdonald, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, described his music as "direct, attractive, unadventurous, and noisy" and as modeled on Meyerbeer and Halévy.

Selected works Music cover for Auguste Mermet's four-act opera, Roland à Roncevaux , circa 1864.

La Bannière du roi (April 1835, Versailles) Le Roi David (3 June 1846, Paris Opera, Salle Le Peletier) Roland à Roncevaux (3 October 1864, Paris Opéra, Salle Le Peletier) Jeanne d'Arc (5 April 1876, Paris Opéra, Palais Garnier). With six complete sets by Jean-Baptiste Lavastre, his brother Antoine, Eugène Carpezat, Charles Cambon, Auguste Rubé, Philippe Chaperon and Jean-Louis Chéret.