ABSTRACT
Opera crafted in a self-consciously national ‘French’ style came into being in the second reign of Louis XIV. The first example of a ‘French’ opera is generally understood to be the pastorale, Pomone, with a libretto by Pierre Perrin, music by Robert Cambert and first performed in Paris in 1671. The title page of the published edition of Pomone offers some important insights into the origins and purpose of this new genre: we read of the work having been performed at the newly created ‘Academy of musical operas in the French language, established by the king on a par with those [academies] found in Italy’.1 As obvious as this may sound today, it was important in 1671 to insist on the fact that French opera had to be in the French language, particularly when it was simultaneously acknowledged that the operatic model was Italian. French opera, then, had both to be like Italian opera and, more importantly, distinct from it.
