Masques et Bergamasques, Suite, op. 112

Prince Albert I of Monaco commissioned a divertissement from Fauré in 1918, and Masques et bergamasques was staged at the Monte-Carlo opera house on 10 April 1919, to a scenario by René Fauchois built around figures from the commedia dell'arte. Fauré was seventy-three and by then largely deaf; much of the music was reworked from pieces written decades earlier, including two movements drafted in the 1860s. He drew a four-movement orchestral suite from the score in 1919 — Ouverture, Menuet, Gavotte, Pastorale — and it is in this form that the music is normally heard.