"[1] Fortunately for Arnault, he was able to enlist the help of the writer Legouvé who added a few more lines to the libretto, containing enough references to liberty to satisfy Baudrais.

In the troubled atmosphere in the weeks before the fall of Robespierre, Arnault continued to worry that the opera would attract unwelcome attention from the authorities, but Méhul was on friendly terms with the leading politician Bertrand Barère.

Shortly after, the composer wrote his most famous work of Revolutionary propaganda music, the Chant du départ.

The couple plan to elope so they can be married by a hermit on a nearby island but as they are making their escape, Aimar surprises them.

In the ensuing fight, Mélidore apparently mortally wounds Aimar, who makes his followers swear revenge.

[4] Elizabeth Bartlet, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, comments : "Méhul’s experiments of the mid-1790s demonstrate how daring he was, particularly in a sometimes shocking use of dissonance, the deliberate incompletion of formal expectations for dramatic effect and the orchestral expression of extreme psychological states to a degree surpassing previous works.

In Mélidore et Phrosine the composer achieved a musical unification through themes and motifs, tonal structures and modulation schemes not hitherto attempted in the genre."

According to Winton Dean, "The harmonic style of Mélidore et Phrosine is bolder than anything in Rossini, Bellini or Donizetti, and even than early Beethoven.

If that sort of descriptive orchestral writing which is called the 'music of Nature' is typically Romantic, we shall find that in Méhul too, at any rate as far as storms are concerned.