It was not a success and was soon eclipsed by Johann Christoph Vogel's opera on the same subject, which premiered the following year.
Marmontel based his French libretto on Metastasio, but sacrificed his predecessor's directness by introducing a superfluous sub-plot.
"[1] The Italian Cherubini also had difficulty setting French and there are numerous examples of false accentuation.
He was also only partially successful at changing his musical style from that of opera seria to one influenced by Christoph Willibald Gluck, who was then fashionable in France.
E. J. Dent wrote, "Cherubini produced a French opera, Démophoon, which in its technical accomplishment is as masterly as anything of Mozart's.