ABSTRACT
Until now, little was known about Rameau’s opera Linus other than that it was abandoned, incomplete, after a few rehearsals and never publicly performed. Apart from a few allusions in the writings of the abbé Joseph de La Porte to a ‘full rehearsal’ of Linus, the only other relevant evidence hitherto identified is in an entry of October 1754 in the diary of Charles Collé, a member of the entourage of the tax-farmer La Pouplinière, Rameau’s patron. A Paris’, it is now preserved in the archives of the Bernis family, the abbé’s collateral descendants. The new material is complemented by another of the abbé de Bernis’s letters, this one to his close friend, the duc de Nivernais, French ambassador in Rome, whose secretary was La Bruère, librettist of Linus. The precious correspondence from the comte de Stainville is currently available only in extracts translated into English by Rohan Butler in his monograph on Stainville and his father.
