Les Augustales

Les Augustales is a divertissement performed only on 14 November 1744 to celebrate Louis XV’s return to health after he had fallen ill at Metz in the early part of August 1744. This brief composition with music by François Rebel and François Francoeur was designed as part of the king’s triumphant entry into Paris on 13 November (see seventeenth-century volume for Rebel and Francoeur). Roy’s libretto was entitled Les Augustales because it was based upon the Romans’ celebration of Augustus’s…