Mendès had begun work on his libretto in 1878, hoping to offer it to "one of the leading lights of the French school [of opera]".

Although he was unimpressed by the literary quality of the drama he had to set, Debussy was encouraged by the prospect that his work would be performed at the Paris Opéra and earn him some money.

Over the next two years Debussy's musical style developed in a radically new direction and his enthusiasm for the old-fashioned Rodrigue et Chimène began to flag.

On 17 May 1893 Debussy attended a performance of Maeterlinck's Symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande and realised that this was exactly the type of drama he had been looking for.

When he played excerpts from the score of Rodrigue et Chimène to Paul Dukas in August of the same year, he confessed that Mendès' libretto was "totally at odds with all that I dream about, demanding a type of music that is alien to me".

The score did, however, survive and the various manuscripts, after being owned by Alfred Cortot were eventually assembled by the American collector Robert Owen Lehman.

Excerpts from a vocal score prepared by the musicologist Richard Langham Smith were performed at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris in June 1987.

Chimène steps forward and begs for justice for her dead father, but Don Diègue pleads equally passionately for the life of the son who has restored his honour.