Connais-tu le pays (Mignon)

Ambroise Thomas set an adaptation by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré of Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and Mignon opened at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17 November 1866. It reached its thousandth performance at that theatre in 1894. For Germany, where audiences resented the handling of Goethe, Thomas supplied a tragic ending in which Mignon dies, and recitatives in place of the spoken dialogue. Two numbers carried the work beyond it: Mignon's song of longing for a country she only half remembers, and Philine's polonaise, a coloratura display piece long detached from the stage.