Abstract
Rameau's late entry into the world of opera is one of the best-known features of his biography. When Hippolyte et Aricie, his first tragédie, burst upon an unsuspecting public at the Académie royale de musique in October 1733, the composer had just turned 50. Of his earlier music, only the second and third books of harpsichord pieces and the cantata Le Berger fidèle would have been at all well known. Yet by the end of the decade, with the appearance of two further tragédies, Castor et Pollux (1737) and Dardanus (1739), and two opéra-ballets, Les Indes galantes (1735) and Les Fêtes d'Hébé (1739), the middle-aged newcomer had established himself as the foremost, if also the most controversial, French composer of his day.
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