Although Rameau’s first opera was not staged until 1733, the theatre had occupied his mind for many years prior to that date. His chamber cantatas were among the first of the genre to be performed, and are some of the most theatrical examples of the form. These facts alone are enough to demonstrate Rameau’s penchant for drama3. He himself was conscious of this predilection, and used it as an argument when trying to convince a dramatist to write a libretto for him. He had at first considered Antoine Danchet, André Campra’s closest collaborator, but then turned to Antoine Houdar de La Motte, who was not only the successful author of L’Europe Galante (written for Campra in 1696), but who had also written Inès de Castro, the famous tragédie, in 1723. Rameau wrote to Houdar de la Motte in 1727. Though the playwright did not reply, he did keep the letter, which has become famous. In order to support his request Rameau sought to calm the writer’s possible doubts about a relatively unknown musician by attempting to show that he was destined for the stage. He wrote, “It would be desirable were there for the theatre a musician who studied nature before portraying it and who, through his art, was able to choose the colours and nuances which his mind and taste indicated to him, and which allowed him to perceive their rapport with the appropriate expression. (…) I possess above all other knowledge that of colour and nuance, that of which (others) only have confused feelings, and which they do not use in just proportion except by chance.” Rameau also enclosed his cantatas L’Enlèvement d’Orithie and Thétis (written around 1715) and some of his ‘programmatic’ harpsichord music, including “Les Sauvages”, which was later used in Les Indes galantes, and “L’Entretien des Muses”, which he magnificently orchestrated for Les Fêtes d’Hébé. His letter concluded, “You will see that I am not a novice in art, and above all that it is not evident that I have used my art liberally in these works; I have used art itself to hide their artistry.”

Although Rameau’s first opera was not staged until 1733, the theatre had occupied his mind for many years prior to that date. His chamber cantatas were among the first of the genre to be performed, and are some of the most theatrical examples of the form. These facts alone are enough to demonstrate Rameau’s penchant for drama

Tragédies lyriques

But to conquer the stage, Rameau had to wait. He had to wait, in fact, for timely help from a sponsor, the tax farmer Alexandre-Jean-Joseph Le Riche de la Pouplinière, who not only engaged Rameau in 1731 to conduct the orchestra he had just founded - a post Rameau would hold for twenty years - but also introduced him to various men of letters. The first of these was none other than Voltaire, who offered to write a text for “Orphée-Rameau”, as he called the composer, as early as 1731. The result was the libretto of Samson. Although the text and part of the music (subsequently used in other works) were completed, the censors unfortunately forbade the staging of the biblically-inspired story. They remembered only too well the scandal caused by the first tragédie lyrique derived from biblical history and written by Michel Pignolet de Montéclair. This was Jepthé (1732), whose librettist, the Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, was known by the satiric epigram, “Lapsed by night but a Catholic by day/He supped at mass and dined at the play”. Pellegrin took up where Voltaire had left off, and offered Rameau his first poem, Hippolyte et Aricie, in 1733. The plot was taken from Racine’s Phèdre, but Pellegrin, who understood that tragédie lyrique was the exact negative of classical tragedy, brought onto the stage the elements that Racine’s play had only narrated. Hippolyte is one of the most baroque texts Rameau set to music. All the gods of Olympus are present; there are also a sea monster, a descent into hell, a hunt, a procession of priestesses, machinery, storms, thunder, flights, and a multitude of apparitions. The opera as a whole is firmly anchored in the original plot by Euripides. Rameau’s long-pent up inspiration was finally released in this work, which contains seven tableaux and over twenty roles. Hippolyte was premiered in October, 1733 at the Académie royale de musique, and had a resounding impact. Despite Campra’s prophetic words (“Here is a man who will drive us all away.”), however, the ‘Lullist’ audience members, accustomed to Lully’s simpler style, rejected the work. It was said that it contained “enough music to fill ten operas”, which, when compared to Lully’s operas, was true enough.