The closest he had come to writing dramatic music was composing a few secular cantatas and some popular pieces for the Paris fairs for his friend Alexis Piron.

[1] Yet Rameau's eagerness to write an opera is shown by a letter he wrote in October 1727 to Antoine Houdar de La Motte asking for a libretto.

It was a strange choice; once famous for providing the texts to such works as André Campra's L'Europe galante (1697) and Marin Marais's Alcyone (1706), Houdar de La Motte had written nothing for the musical stage for almost 20 years.

I only began work on an opera when I was 50, I still didn't think I was capable; I tried my hand, I was lucky, I continued.Tragédie en musique had been invented as a genre by Lully and his librettist Quinault in the 1670s and 1680s.

As Sylvie Bouissou puts it:[12] With a single stroke Rameau destroyed everything Lully had spent years in constructing: the proud, chauvinistic and complacent union of the French around one and the same cultural object, the offspring of his and Quinault's genius.

[13] Audiences and music critics soon split into two factions: the traditionalist lullistes and Rameau's supporters, the ramistes or ramoneurs (a play on the French word for 'chimney-sweeps').

Cuthbert Girdlestone described the quarrel thus:[14] From the performance of Hippolyte, "two violently extreme parties were to be found in France, enraged against each other; the older and the newer music was for each of them a kind of religion for which they took up arms.

These changes were so drastic – the musicologist Sylvie Bouissou describes them as "blasphemy" - that the soprano Mlle Chevalier refused to sing the role of Phèdre.

[17] By this time, his reputation as the foremost French composer was so firmly established that he was confident enough to restore some of the most daring music from the original version, including the "Trio des Parques" and Phèdre's arias.

They attacked what they regarded as poor staging, acting and choreography, but their harshest criticism was reserved for the alterations to the score made by Vincent d'Indy.

We have utterly forgotten the character of early opera, which is a suite of dances tied together by dialogues and airs, and not, as in the nineteenth century, a dramatic plot decked out with festivities and parades.There was no attempt to use Baroque instruments and the harpsichord was barely audible in the huge auditorium of the Palais Garnier.

[20] Hippolyte et Aricie appeared with increasing frequency on stage and in concert in the second half of the 20th century with performances under Jean-Claude Malgoire and Charles Mackerras, for example.

William Christie again conducted the opera at the Palais Garnier, Paris in 1996 in a production by Jean-Marie Villegier which subsequently toured Nice, Montpellier, Caen, Vienna and New York.

In the 21st century there have been performances conducted by Jane Glover, Ryan Brown, Emmanuelle Haïm, Raphaël Pichon, György Vashegyi and William Christie (this time at Glyndebourne in 2013).

Distant models for Hippoyte et Aricie were Hippolytus by Euripides and Phaedra by Seneca the Younger, but the most important source was Jean Racine's famous tragedy Phèdre (1677).

Graham Sadler writes: In spite of the opera's title, it is not the youthful lovers Hippolytus and Aricia that dominate the drama but rather the tragic figures of Theseus and Phaedra.

It gains immensely by Pellegrin's decision to devote the whole of Act 2 to the king's selfless journey to Hades.He goes on to describe Theseus as "one of the most moving and monumental characterizations in Baroque opera.

"[26] The overture begins conventionally enough, in traditionally noble Lullian style, but the technical complexity of the ensuing fugal movement must have disturbed conservative critics worried that Rameau's music would be overly savant (learned).

Instead, Pellegrin uses it to foreshadow the action of the main opera by showing Destiny ordering Diana and Cupid to unite their efforts to ensure a happy outcome for Hippolyte and Aricie's love.

[34] There are lively and rhythmically inventive dances for the demons[35] contrasted with Thésée's moving invocations to save the life of his friend Pirithous in music in which "the expression of the sentiment is cut down, as it were, to the bone".

[36] The act concludes with the famous and controversial second "Trio des Parques", omitted from the premiere because the Opéra's singers and instrumentalists found it too hard to play.

[37][38] At the beginning of Act Three, Phèdre implores Venus for mercy in the aria "Cruelle mère des amours" which Girdlestone praises as a "magnificent solo" in spite of its "terribly flat" words.

In a scene of "grim irony", Thésée is forced to suppress his rage while he watches a divertissement of sailors thanking Neptune for his safe return home.

[40] The festivities over, Thésée finally has the chance to call on his father Neptune to punish Hippolyte in the invocation "Puissant maître des flots", which Girdlestone regarded as one of the finest solos of the 18th century with its contrast between the violin melody and the slower bass.

[41] Act Four opens with Hippolyte's monologue "Ah, faut-il qu'en un jour", which looks forward to similarly "elegiac" arias in Rameau's later operas, for example "Lieux désolés" in Les Boréades.

This particular specimen has no connection with the action of the drama, something Rameau would change with ariettes he wrote later, such as "Que ce séjour est agréable" and "Aux langueurs d'Apollon Daphné se refusa" in Platée.

The opera uses an orchestra with the following instrumentation: two flutes, two oboes, two bassoons, two musettes, two horns, two trumpets, timpani and other percussion, strings (with divided violas), and harpsichord.

Before she does so, she and Hippolytus reveal mutual love to each other and, defying the will of Phaedra, the priestesses of Diana proclaim that it is unlawful to force her to dedicate her heart to the goddess when it already belongs to another.

[52] The opera was parodied twice at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris, once by François Riccoboni and Jean-Antoine Romagnesi (premiered 30 November 1733) and then, during the 1742 revival, by Charles-Simon Favart (11 October 1742).

[54] Frugoni's version of Pellegrin's libretto was also the basis for a handful of later operas: Ignaz Holzbauer's Ippolito ed Aricia (Mannheim, 1759),[55] Giovanni Paisiello's Fedra (Naples, 1 January 1788),[56] and Sebastiano Nasolini's Teseo a Stige (Florence, 28 December 1790).