Méhul turned instead to the Opéra-Comique, offering the theatre a new opera, Euphrosine, with a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, who would collaborate with the composer on many more works in the 1790s.

Winton Dean has described Euphrosine as "an uneven work that reveals the sources of [Méhul's] style (Grétry, the Neapolitans, Haydn, but not much Gluck) before the full impact of Cherubini or the Revolution.

It has a brilliantly witty libretto by François Hoffman, in which the young heroine sets out to tame the surly tyrant Coradin in the manner of Anne Whitefield in Man and Superman ... much of the music is as light-fingered as the libretto; but the emotions of jealousy and remorse released in Méhul a remarkable concentration of power and originality, as they were often to do later (for example in the characters of Othon in Ariodant and Siméon in Joseph).

[7] Dean is one of many critics who have singled out the "Jealousy Duet" (Gardez-vous de la jalousie) in Act II for particular praise.

"[4] Berlioz regarded Euphrosine as Méhul's masterpiece: "It has grace, delicacy, dash, plenty of dramatic movement, and passionate outbursts of terrific violence and veracity.