(Hippolytus and Aricia) was the first opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau. It was premiered to great controversy by the Académie Royale de Musique at its theatre in the Palais-Royal in Paris on October 1, 1733. The French libretto, by Abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, is based on Racine's tragedy Phèdre. The opera takes the traditional form of a with an allegorical prologue followed by five acts. Early audiences found little else conventional about the work. Background Rameau was almost 50 when he wrote Hippolyte et Aricie and there was little in his life to suggest he was about to embark on a major new career as an opera composer. He was famous for his works on music theory as well as books of harpsichord pieces. 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. 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. Nothing came of the request and there is no record of any reply, but the fact that Rameau carefully preserved his own letter among his personal papers proves how much the project must have meant to him. The turning point finally came in 1732. In February that year, Michel Montéclair's Jephté premiered at the Paris Opéra. Rameau was said to be so impressed by the opera that he approached its librettist, Pellegrin, for a of his own. The result was Hippolyte et Aricie. In spring 1733, the new opera was given a run-through either at the house of Rameau's patron, La Pouplinière, or at that of the Prince de Carignan. It went into rehearsal at the Opéra in July. Even at this stage, there were problems; Rameau had to cut the second Trio des Parques ("Trio of the Fates") in the second act, because the performers found it too hard to play. This was just a foretaste of the difficulties to come when Hippolyte et Aricie received its premiere on 1 October, shortly after Rameau's 50th birthday. In 1744, Rameau recollected: Performance history