Aline, reine de Golconde

[1] The action takes place in India, where queen Aline recognises the newly arrived ambassador Saint Phar as her long lost lover from a time when she was a mere peasant girl.

L'esprit des journaux, francais et etrangers commented that the first version had been updated in the light of changes to public taste and the styles made popular by Christoph Willibald Gluck.

The music was full of pleasant tunes, but the recitatives, now all accompanied rather than “secco” as before, were too heavy for a pastoral and the public felt that the dances were too long.

[7] In 1803 a different work with the same name premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, with a libretto by Jean-Baptiste-Charles Vial and Etienne Guillaume François de Favières and music by Henri-Montan Berton.

[8] Gaetano Donizetti wrote his opera Alina, regina di Golconda on the same theme, using an Italian translation of the same libretto.