Les fêtes de Ramire (The Celebrations of Ramiro ) is an opera in the form of a one-act acte de ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Voltaire, first performed on 22 December 1745 at Versailles.
Voltaire wrote a new libretto to make use of music taken from his and Rameau's comédie-ballet La princesse de Navarre, which had been performed earlier in 1745. Since both Rameau and Voltaire were busy writing a new opera, Le temple de la Gloir...
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Les fêtes de Ramire (The Celebrations of Ramiro ) is an opera in the form of a one-act acte de ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Voltaire, first performed on 22 December 1745 at Versailles.
Voltaire wrote a new libretto to make use of music taken from his and Rameau's comédie-ballet La princesse de Navarre, which had been performed earlier in 1745. Since both Rameau and Voltaire were busy writing a new opera, Le temple de la Gloire, the Duke of Richelieu entrusted the job of fitting the music to the new libretto and adjusting the verse accordingly to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, who had not yet won his reputation as a major thinker, was an aspiring musician. In his later autobiographical Confessions, Rousseau wrote he had worked hard on the task but Madame de la Pouplinière, Richelieu's mistress and an ardent champion of Rameau, rejected his efforts out of hand and sent the opera back to Rameau to revise.
Rousseau claimed he was responsible for the overture and...
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