Le Deserteur Drame en trois Actes, Dédié A Son Altesse Sérénissime Monseigneur Le Duc D'Orleans Premier Prince du Sang, Representé par les Comediens Italiens ordinaires du Roi le 6 Mars 1769. Gravé par Mlle. Vendome et le Sr. Moria. [Full score, text in French].

Paris: Claude Herissant. 1769. First edition. Folio. 2ff., 267 pp. Quarter vellum with stamped boards, heavily worn with spine chipped and with some losses. Some browning and occasional minor staining, one page with a tear in the margin, a number of pages creased at lower right corners, and a few pages with pencil markings.

First Edition. Lesure p. 440. BUC p. 685. RISM M3167. With libretto by Sedaine, who collaborated with Monsigny on a number of his most successful works. "Le déserteur displays an amazing compendium of procedures all combining to express the purest pathos: the frequent use of minor keys, often intensified by chromaticism; instrumental effects (three pieces call for the use of mutes); dramatic breaks in the discourse; fugal writing; and silence from characters confronted with a fate too cruel to bear. Such concentrated methods had no equivalent in French music of the galant period, but nonetheless Monsigny struck a deep chord of sympathy in his public, for Le déserteur was among the opéras comiques most often performed during the last two decades of the ancien régime, and had a long history of performance in foreign theatres." (Grove Online) (7464)

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