Hellé (Helle) is an opera by the French composer Étienne-Joseph Floquet, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) on 5 January 1779.
[1] At this time, there was little demand for operas by native French composers (Parisian audiences preferred works by the German Christoph Willibald Gluck or the Italian Niccolò Piccinni) and Floquet struggled to have Hellé staged.
[2] When it eventually appeared in 1779, it was booed, despite Floquet's attempt to imitate the style of Piccinni, and ran for only three performances.
Elphingor conjures a vision which persuades Hellé that her beloved has been unfaithful to her and she flees from the court.
Neptune brings Hellé to his underwater palace and makes her ruler of the sea in which her ship sank, giving it the region the name Hellespont after her.