“Les Paladins” was Rameau’s last work premiered at the Académie royale de musique in 1760. Sharply criticized on account of its overtly comical libretto, the work was withdrawn after fifteen performances and was thus one of the most stinging failures in the composer’s career. Seen from today’s perspective, the public reception is hardly comprehensible for such an inventive work. Radically rejuvenating his writing, Rameau displays a youthful, playful personality, miles away from the critics reproaching him for being nothing but an old man in his dotage. One ban barely imagine such a work coming from the pen of a septuagenarian!

Rameau did not prepare the work for publication, and the “Œuvres complètes” under Camille Saint-Saëns’s general editorship did not include the work in the collection issued by Durand. The present volume of “Opera omnia Rameau” is thus the first edition of Les Paladins.