In their original context, French solo cantatas indulged literary-minded listeners with venerable tales of love affairs that typically end badly. A vital element of French salon culture in the decades around 1700, these petits tragédies brought leading singers and composers into influential households.

Leander and Hero, who struggle against class and geographic barriers, found a champion in Louis-Nicolas Clérambault, master of the French cantata. Orpheus and Euridice, whose tragic separation inspired countless operas, gave the young Jean-Philippe Rameau similarly juicy material for his first dramatic work. Decades would pass before he found his true calling as a composer of music for the stage.

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