While still in Marseilles, Audran wrote a half dozen operettas, the most successful of which was "Le grand mogol" (1877), with a libretto by Henri Chivot. Together with the playwright Alfred Duru, Audran and Chivot revised the piece for a Paris production in 1884. He moved to Paris in 1879, "where at first he occupied a humble lodging in a garret", but he was soon prosperous, with the success of "Les noces d'Olivette" (1879), which had "an enormous vogue". The work speedily found its way to London (as "Olivette"), in an English translation by H. B. Farnie, and ran for more than a year at the Strand Theatre (1880–81). The critic of "The Pall Mall Gazette", predicting "a brilliant and enduring success", wrote, "Bizet in his "Carmen" has scarcely been more successful in catching the atmosphere of Andalusia than has M. Audran in assigning to "Les Noces d'Olivette" that of Provence."