User:Folantin/Lost

Background
Le temple de la Gloire was the final collaboration between Rameau and Voltaire and the only full-length opera by them to enjoy a stage performance.

After the Voltaire-Rameau La princesse de Navarre /// Voltaire resented the style forced on him by the Duc de Richelieu. With Le temple de la Gloire he hoped to have the freedom to create his own idea of a perfect opera libretto: "I will do it according to my own taste, a noble taste appropriate to the great things it must express... They're not going to make me to stoop to the level of Morillo again." (Morillo was a buffoonish comic character in La princesse de Navarre). Voltaire devised a moral allegory with the focus on political lessons rather than the love interest traditional in French operas. The character Trajan is presented as a royal role model. In contrast to the bloodthirsty Bélus and the pleasure-loving Bacchus, Trajan is a magnanimous and modest ruler who aims at public rather than personal happiness.

First version
The first version was performed on 27 November 1745 and // December at the Grande Écurie, Versailles /// It transferred, unsuccessfully, to the Paris Opéra on 7 December 1745. A revised version, in a prologue and three acts, appeared at the Opéra on 19 April 1746.

Second version
The transfer to the Paris Opéra on /// was a failure. Audiences did not appreciate the lack of love interest and found the moralising too close to Jesuit school dramas. Rameau and Voltaire reworked the opera so it was more in accordance with Parisian taste. Voltaire made the changes only grudgingly, complaining that he was "metamorphosing Bélus into a shepherd, elevating Bacchus to a role model and making Trajan look ridiculous." The new version was reduced to three acts and a prologue: the original first act became the new prologue and the fourth and fifth acts were telescoped into one.