Intrigue and controversy at the Académie royale de musqiue

Berlioz’s enthusiastic account – written in 1858 – of his encounter with Salieri’s Les Danaïdes shortly after his arrival in Paris in the 1820s, shows the strong cathartic power of this opera, written in the modern style of Gluck. The audience had also been moved and impressed eighty years previously, when the work had been premièred at the Académie Royale de Musique.