His early works were already accomplished to a high degree and his operas occupied the French stage for more than thirty years, only to disappear after his death. To quote Girdlestone’s incisive summing up, Rameau wrote "more than ninety acts of dramatic music" - that is, three acts, or tableaux, a year - during the last third of his life. This is an apt way to represent Rameau’s operas; it would be difficult to otherwise describe an œuvre characterised by such wide-ranging form, proportion and genre.

Rameau’s thirty works for the stage fall into seven categories: there are eight actes de ballet, seven opéra-ballets, six tragédies lyriques, four pastorales héroïques, two comédies lyriques, two comédies-ballets, and one pastorale. These categories delineate the works in a variety of ways: in terms of the theatrical or choreographical elements they contain, in terms of their tragic or comic tone, and in terms of their length or number of acts.

The tragédie lyrique lies at one end of the spectrum; it is a lengthy "serious" opera concerned primarily with dramatic stagecraft. At the other extreme lies the acte de ballet, which treats ..

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