The Breasts of Tiresias

Les mamelles de Tirésias (The Breasts of Tiresias) is a surrealist two-act opéra bouffe by Francis Poulenc, based on the play of the same title by Guillaume Apollinaire, which was written in 1903 but first performed in 1917. The opera premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 June 1947.

Poulenc first thought of setting the opera in the 1930s, and began composition in 1939, finishing in 1944. He altered the setting from the real African island of Zanzibar to an imaginary town called Zanzibar near Monte Carlo (Apollinaire's childhood home) on the French Riviera. This latitude, he said, was "quite tropical enough for the Parisian that I am."

The opera closes with the stern command, "Ô Français, faites des enfants!" ("O Frenchmen, make babies!"), and the success of this is perhaps seen in the fact that the first two sopranos cast in the role of Tiresias had to give it up before the premiere on account of pregnancy.