In the web of contradictions forming the history of its reception, François-André Danican Philidor's Ernelinde is seen alternately as a grand success and an utter failure, praised or condemned for its innovation and written off as plagiarism. From its initial run of eighteen performances at the Académie Royale de Musique in 1767 and 1768 to its revivals in 1769, 1773 and 1777, the work was a subject of intense debate between partisans of traditional French music and proponents of the modern Italian style. And while in the history of the criticism of Ernelinde it has been conjectured that this opera was actually conceived as a practical joke, a ‘mystification’ consisting of a parody of Italian composers that Philidor intended to reveal once it had succeeded – a conjecture which Julian Rushton has shown to be largely unfoundedFootnote ¹ – we will see in the following pages that the reception of Ernelinde is, none the less, closely related to the history of mystification.

It was, in fact, for Philidor's librettist, Antoine-Henri Poinsinet, that the word ‘mystification’ was invented. The portrait of Poinsinet drawn by various authors is rendered typically by Louis Petit de Bachaumont in an obituary article following his death in 1769:

While originally referring to a kind of burlesque initiation ritual fashionable in Parisian literary circles during the 1750sFootnote ³ – in which a novice would, for instance, be asked to read his play in front of a disapproving audience, or made to stand so close to a fire that his legs would get burned – the word was soon to acquire an aesthetic sense, notably in the writings of Diderot, relating to various means of giving fiction the appearance of truth or vice versa.Footnote ⁴ Though some may not be used to seeing aesthetics as having to do with ritual, their relation becomes apparent if we consider that mystification was originally part of an initiation into the world of letters.

The theory that Ernelinde was at once a plagiarism and a mystification, though essentially unfounded, points to an association that is fundamental. In the introduction to his account of Poinsinet's adventures, Jean Monnet underlines what he perceives to be the poet's confusion of invention with plagiarism: ‘Since his childhood, he had read only new novels and verses from the Mercure from which he borrowed marvellously in composing what he called his poems’ (‘Depuis son enfance, il n'avoit lu que les Romans nouveaux & les Vers du Mercure dont il s'aidoit merveilleusement pour composer ce qu'il appelloit ses poësies’).Footnote ⁵ That the original victim of mystification is said to be a plagiarist echoes the language of literary initiation rituals in Paris, in which initiates were called ‘originals’ in a pejorative sense.Footnote ⁶ The subject of a comedy by Charles Palissot de Montenoy, Le cercle ou les originaux, first performed in 1755, the mystification of ‘originals’ – that is, in a word, flawed copies, or bizarre individuals – emerged as a common theme in the French literary world during the following years before being taken up again by Poinsinet in Le cercle, ou la soirée à la mode.

Received with universal praise when it was performed in 1764, Poinsinet's comedy was viewed by Palissot as a copy of his own play. In a satirical pamphlet, La Gageure de M. Poinsinet, Palissot portrays Poinsinet as having made a wager in the presence of a ‘society’ that he would compose a play in which there was not a single line of his own invention, where everything, including the title, would be pillaged – and yet that the play would be rehearsed, performed and applauded as an original work. Although, as Auguste Vitu has shown, Palissot's accusations are, for the most part, false, or greatly exaggerated, they none the less reinforced Poinsinet's reputation as a plagiarist.Footnote ⁷

At a time when it is said to have been emerging as a new aesthetic category, originality encountered strong resistance.Footnote ⁸ An author as innovative as Denis Diderot was subject to the same accusations as Poinsinet, as, for instance, in Palissot's Petites lettres sur les grands philosophes, where he is criticized at once as a plagiarist and an ‘original’. Though it might seem that the reception of authors should be contingent on the reception of their work, in a society as encoded as the Parisian literary world of the 1760s, it could happen that resistance to a work was predicated on resistance to its author. And Poinsinet is, more than any other perhaps, the author whose original works were received as the works of an ‘original’.

Public excitement in anticipation of Ernelinde was largely owing to its association with a ‘new genre’ that, as Poinsinet explained in his Preface to the 1767 edition of the libretto, he was hoping to bring to the stage of the Académie Royale de MusiqueFootnote ⁹ – a genre in which the setting of French words to Italianate music was linked to a debate as to the respective merits of French and Italian opera dating from the early 1750s, the famous ‘Querelle des Bouffons’.Footnote ¹⁰ As told by Bachaumont, the turnout for the first performance, on 24 November 1767, was unlike almost anything in the history of the Paris Opera: ‘All the boxes were reserved: people were already there at noon, and the hall was overflowing, as were the corridors, the galleries and the avenues’ (‘Toutes les loges étaient louées: il y avait du monde dès midi, et la salle regorgeait, ainsi que les corridors, les galeries, les avenues’).Footnote ¹¹ In spite of this overwhelming enthusiasm in anticipation of the premiere, Bachaumont offered an opinion of the piece that was less than favourable: ‘People were not satisfied at this first performance. Those sympathetic to the musician blame the poem, which in truth does not lend itself to singing and the stage.’ (‘On n'a pas été satisfait à cette première représentation. Les amis du musicien accusent le poème, qui à la vérité ne prête pas au chant et à la scène’.)Footnote ¹²

Bachaumont's assessment is not so simple as it first appears, however. He gives the impression that he is reporting a general opinion, but, as we will see, Ernelinde also had many supporters at its first performance. And since Bachaumont's view is decidedly partial, we might question his assertion that ‘those sympathetic to the musician blame the poem’.

A year later, when the opera was staged for a second time, Friedrich Melchior Grimm offered a judgment recalling Bachaumont's view that Poinsinet was responsible for the alleged failure: ‘The music of this opera is superb, but it was unable to sustain the poem when it was first performed, and it will not sustain it in this revival. It is obvious from this experiment that it is not with music that one can succeed at the Paris Opera.’ (‘La musique de cet opéra est superbe, mais elle n'a pas pu soutenir le poème dans sa nouveauté, elle ne le soutiendra pas à cette reprise. Il est bien démontré par cet essai que ce n'est pas avec de la musique qu'on peut réussir à l'Opéra de Paris.’)Footnote ¹³

Although the judgments of Grimm and Bachaumont were the most influential, and are often echoed in the writings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century critics,Footnote ¹⁴ other contemporary sources show that they were not representative of general opinion. While some contemporary judgments were critical, others were entirely favourable. An article in the Avantcoureur dated 30 November 1767 tells us that several pieces were applauded enthusiastically, and praises both the score and the libretto, which is said to be at once interesting and lively (‘Le poème a de l'intérêt et du mouvement’Footnote ¹⁵). Further testimony is found in an ‘Epître au sujet d'Ernelinde’ published some weeks later in the Mercure de France, where a partisan of French music hostile to the new genre responds to what he perceives to be a shocking success. The work is said to offer new things little known to the French stage, while public acclaim appears so excessive as to be fanatical:

Although unwelcome to the author of this epistle, the success of Ernelinde goes unquestioned. That the pleasure caused by the opera was, as he says, voiced both from the stalls and from the boxes suggests that approval was more or less universal. Nothing in the assessment by this partisan of French music, who, one has to assume, would have preferred to see Ernelinde fail, allows us to suspect anything other than a complete success.

The success of Ernelinde and the circumstances surrounding its creation are specifically addressed in an article in the Journal de musique by Nicolas-Étienne Framery from July 1770. Published at a time when the performances of Ernelinde were still a recent memory, but presumably after some of the initial controversy had subsided, this article offers a mix of praise and criticism for a project to which the author is openly sympathetic. According to Framery, Ernelinde was a ‘big machine that could not have a mediocre success’ (‘une grande machine qui ne pouvait avoir un succès médiocre’); there was thus ‘no middle ground between victory and death’ (‘point de milieu entre la victoire & la mort’).Footnote ¹⁷ And if ‘all the good this work could be expected to bring to the musical arts did not occur’ (‘tout le bien que l'Art Musical pouvait attendre de cet Ouvrage n'arriva point’), this is ‘because it had too many things stacked against it’ (‘parce qu'il réunit trop de choses contre lui’).Footnote ¹⁸ While pointing to the antagonism of the partisans of French music and of ‘everyone opposed to the success of new endeavours, simply because they are new’ (‘tous ceux qui s'opposent au succès des nouvelles tentatives, par cette raison qu'elles sont nouvelles’),Footnote ¹⁹ Framery also mentions Poinsinet, who, as Mark Darlow has observed, is criticized ‘for both wishing to translate an Italian work and adding the aspects of French musical art which were not used in Italy, namely ballets and Italian recitative forms, difficult to employ in France because the declamation of the two styles is so radically different’.Footnote ²⁰ That ‘malice, much more often than taste, dictates criticism’ (‘la malignité, bien plus souvent que le goût, dicte les critiques’);Footnote ²¹ that the Académie Royale de Musique itself did not entirely wish to see the opera succeed;Footnote ²² that substitutes – or ‘actors that the public does not like to see, however good they may be’ (‘les Acteurs que le Public n'aime point à voir si bons qu'ils soient’)Footnote ²³ – were used in some of the first performances: these are some of the reasons Framery gives for what he persists in calling ‘the success of Ernelinde’, while adding that they are perhaps ‘more worth knowing than the jokes that have been made about this work’ (‘meilleures à savoir que les plaisanteries qu'on a faites sur cet Ouvrage’).Footnote ²⁴

Framery thus implies that mockery of the work had diverted attention from its merits. This diversion of attention from questions of artistic merit to mockery is, as I have shown elsewhere, a pattern that pervades the reception of Poinsinet for his entire career.Footnote ²⁵ Called le mystifié because of the various practical jokes played on him during the 1750s, Poinsinet is also remembered as one of the worst librettists of his time.Footnote ²⁶ A closer look at his career shows a different picture, though, from the one usually projected. Hidden behind the label of le mystifié is an exceptional literary career that took shape in the 1760s. From 1762 to 1767 Poinsinet enjoyed a number of dramatic successes, including Le cercle, ou la soirée à la mode as well as Le Sorcier, and Tom Jones in collaboration with Philidor, while gaining the patronage of the Prince de Condé, for whom he organized a programme of festivities at Chantilly.

Whereas Poinsinet first became known in the world of French letters as an object of ridicule, he none the less was to receive literary acclaim beyond that of many of his most famous contemporaries.Footnote ²⁷ Yet even during this period of success, he remained an object of persistent mockery.Footnote ²⁸ The impression that Bachaumont and Grimm give of a man on the receiving end of so much ridicule is hard to reconcile with Poinsinet's literary achievements. Disinclined to recognize Poinsinet's success, Grimm, in his review of Le cercle, resorts to telling the story of Poinsinet's mystifications dating from a decade earlier, stating that he had previously been known only as ‘a kind of imbecile’ (‘une espèce d'imbécile’).Footnote ²⁹ For Bachaumont, Poinsinet was simply too unrefined and too bourgeois to paint the manners of high society.Footnote ³⁰ In a few short years Poinsinet had risen to the upper echelons of the literary world, and Ernelinde was an occasion for him to continue this ascent. It was accordingly met with strong resistance, and, once again exhibiting the tension between Poinsinet's reputation as an object of ridicule and his quest for literary fame, the much-anticipated unveiling of the opera was marked by a number of practical jokes.

In the days following the first performance Poinsinet wrote to various journals to disavow correspondence, supposedly with his mistresses, that had been circulated in Parisian society and published in Brussels. The letters are clearly a hoax, placing Poinsinet in ridiculous situations and attributing to him a number of inappropriate remarks: comparisons of Mlle Le Clerc, a famous prostitute and supposedly Poinsinet's former mistress, with the actresses who had played the leading roles in Le cercle, ou la soirée à la mode, for instance, could only have been insulting to Poinsinet's colleagues. These letters were clearly intended not only to mock Poinsinet, but also to damage his professional relationships.Footnote ³¹ Shortly after Ernelinde's final performance Bachaumont describes how Poinsinet was attacked and beaten by a band of women at the bal de l'opéra, in the presence of a large crowd and to his great displeasure, adding that such was the price of fame and glory.Footnote ³²

Meanwhile, a singer in the chorus at the Opéra, Mlle Le Blanc de Crouzoul, brought a lawsuit against Poinsinet over a watch she claimed to have given him ten years earlier. In a statement of case that was widely circulated in Parisian society – according to Bachaumont, it was read even by the king – Poinsinet is said never to have returned the watch; but more importantly, he is mocked for his naivety as the victim of so many jokes and for his presumptuous aspiration to be an author. The statement is admittedly very funny, yet was potentially damaging to Poinsinet, even though he ended up winning his case. But, as Poinsinet observed in his response, the statement of case against him invited judgments of his literary output and his naivety, neither of which had anything to do with Mlle Le Blanc de Crouzoul's actual complaint.Footnote ³³

Is it a coincidence that these practical jokes were played on Poinsinet at the very moment he was engaged in a widely publicized and innovative artistic endeavour? Although the authors of these jokes remain for the most part anonymous, their purpose is readily identifiable: Poinsinet is reduced from the status of an author to that of a comic figure as part of a concerted effort to tarnish his success.

A subject of controversy during its first run, Ernelinde received universal praise when, with revisions to the score by Philidor and to the libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine, it was performed again in 1777. So was this belated praise due, as some critics have suggested, to Sedaine's revisions to the work of Poinsinet?Footnote ³⁴ Julian Rushton thinks not, observing that while the original Ernelinde was, in spirit and technique, ‘the true harbinger of the Gluck–Piccinni era’, the opera was well received only ten years later, ‘coming, as it were, in the wake of Gluck’.Footnote ³⁵Ernelinde benefited from the fashion it helped to introduce only after the fact. In spite of its shortcomings, the 1767–1769 version of Ernelinde was perhaps more truly ‘epoch-making’,Footnote ³⁶ and, in aesthetic terms, Sedaine's extending the libretto from three to five acts seems regressive.Footnote ³⁷

It may also be that, for some contemporaries at least, Poinsinet's absence allowed for an unreserved expression of praise that was repressed in the original controversy. A comparison of Grimm's judgments shows that, whereas he originally blamed the opera's failure on Poinsinet, he later singled out for praise sections in which the words had not been changed, or had been only slightly altered, by Sedaine: Ernelinde's ‘superb monologue’ (‘Où suis-je? quel épais nuage / Me dérobe l'éclat des cieux?’) and the ‘magnificent chorus from the first act’ (‘Jurons sur nos glaives sanglants’).Footnote ³⁸ So when Grimm, who had often expressed admiration for Sedaine and disdain for Poinsinet, finally came to praise Ernelinde, he was, despite appearances to the contrary (and perhaps unwittingly) lauding the latter.

Seen from a historical distance, Grimm's inconsistencies appear almost comical. But, in the reception history of Ernelinde, such inconsistencies are more the rule than the exception. From the time of its creation the theories of Philidor and Poinsinet were associated with those developed by François-Jean de Chastellux in his Essai sur l'union de la poésie et de la musique.Footnote ³⁹ And while Chastellux himself was proud to recognize the influence of his own ideas on Ernelinde,Footnote ⁴⁰ his opinion of the opera was the same as Grimm's: he admired it only for the music, and had nothing but disdain for the words. Whereas the object of his essay had been to make poets musicians and musicians poets,Footnote ⁴¹ his own judgment of Ernelinde – that the music was perfectly suited to the stage, but that its success was prevented by the flaws of the poemFootnote ⁴² – placed poetry and music at odds. And one has to wonder why he recognized his influence on a work for which his admiration consisted precisely in separating the musical score from the libretto.

From the similarities observed between theories of the encyclopedists and those associated with Ernelinde, it has been concluded that Poinsinet was influenced by the encyclopedists. Without dismissing this line of influence, we may also ask whether Poinsinet might not have had ideas similar to those of the encyclopedists without necessarily deriving his ideas from them. Two years prior to the creation of Ernelinde, Poinsinet exposed some of his views on lyrical theatre in his Preface to La réconciliation villageoise. Although his contemporaries often claimed he was incapable of invention, it would be unfair to assume that the ideas expressed in these pages are not his own:

La réconciliation villageoise is a lyrical comedy by La Ribardière, revised and adapted for the stage by Poinsinet, who, accustomed to accusations of plagiarism, answers them in advance by quoting passages from the original text:

Although the association in this Preface of a discussion of theories of music with a response to accusations of plagiarism appears accidental, it is part of a broader pattern in the reception history of Ernelinde, where it has been widely assumed that Poinsinet borrowed other people's theories.Footnote ⁴⁵ But that Poinsinet would simply have adopted the theses of the Essai sur l'union de la poésie et de la musique seems unlikely, given that the preface to La réconciliation villageoise shows him to be in disagreement with principles advanced by Chastellux. Perhaps it was partly because Chastellux had criticized the excess of verses and ideas in an arietta from Tom Jones that Poinsinet decided to respond to him in this Preface.Footnote ⁴⁶ Whatever his motivation, though, it is clear that, based on his own experience, he rejected what appeared to him to be too rigid in the theories of Chastellux.Footnote ⁴⁷

The disagreement between Chastellux and Poinsinet is only partial. Both are pleading for the union of poetry and music, Chastellux from the standpoint of musicians and Poinsinet from that of poets. What distinguishes them from each other in particular is their relation to theory and practice: while one wishes to establish rules from which to derive a practice, the other deduces rules from his own experience. Whereas Chastellux wishes to determine the origins and progress of music from antiquity to his own time, the observations of Poinsinet are specifically concerned with the state of music in contemporary France: ‘Seven or eight years ago, all anyone wanted was music’. This period separated Poinsinet's first success, Gilles, garçon peintre, from his most recent one, Tom Jones. His own career having evolved with the new genre, it is reasonable to think that the path leading from lowly to more elevated subjects led him to propose a mixed aesthetic of Italian, French and German music, which prefigured Ernelinde, around the time of the essay by Chastellux.

While Poinsinet is assumed to have borrowed Chastellux's theories, the reasons why he would have done so are rarely explained. And if we applied as broad a frame of reference to Poinsinet's Preface as has been applied to Chastellux's essay, we could as easily conclude that others were indebted to Poinsinet, whose refutation of Chastellux rests on ideas that gained a new currency several years later, with the success of the new genre. In his Lettre sur la musique published a year prior to the creation of Iphigénie en Aulide – a document that is traditionally said to have brought about the reformation of the aesthetics of French opera – Christoph Willibald Gluck speaks of the relationship between words and music in terms similar to those used in Poinsinet's Preface: ‘However talented the composer, his music will never be anything other than mediocre if the poet does not inspire in him that enthusiasm in the absence of which productions of all the arts are feeble and languid.’ (‘Quelque talent qu'ait le compositeur, il ne fera jamais que de la musique médiocre, si le poëte n'excite pas en lui cet enthousiasme sans lequel les productions de tous les arts sont faibles & languissantes.’Footnote ⁴⁸) Echoing Poinsinet's assertion of the pre-eminence of words over music – ‘These days it is the poet who draws attention to the musician … I will let time be the judge, and it will prove what I say’ – Gluck's letter could be said to fulfil a prophecy, as could Framery's response to a letter by Chastellux published a decade later in Mercure de France:

While Poinsinet's observations resonate through the debates about music in the decades following his collaboration with Philidor, their relevance is not limited to the realm of theory, but, according to some accounts, extends to the area of performance. A notice from the Anecdotes dramatiques published in 1775, apparently referring to the staging of Ernelinde in Brussels on 15 October 1772, suggests that the opera established the reputation of French music outside of France:

While attesting further to the success of Ernelinde (and prior to Sedaine's revision of the libretto in 1773), the author of this anecdote suggests that Philidor and Poinsinet had vindicated the French language against the accusation that it was unsuitable for grand musical compositions – moreover, at a time when Gluck and du Roullet were making this vindication a primary objective in proposing Iphigénie en Aulide to the directors of the Paris Opera.Footnote ⁵¹ With this comparison of Poinsinet's observations with writings by Gluck and Framery I do not mean to propose a direct line of influence, but rather to show Poinsinet's relevance to theoretical discussions in the period following Ernelinde, and also to revise the notion that his aesthetics were simply borrowed from Chastellux.

Although, in light of the development of the new genre, Poinsinet's observations from 1765 appear prophetic, when Diderot, following a period of silence, expressed an opinion on Ernelinde, he aligned himself with Chastellux and Grimm, dismissing Poinsinet's contribution: ‘And if Philidor had had a prophet other than Poinsinet, would we not know, from the success of Ernelinde, that one could hear a lyrical tragedy from beginning to end with the greatest interest?’ (‘Et si Philidor avait eu un autre prophète que Poinsinet, ne saurions-nous pas, par le succès d'Ernelinde , qu'on pourrait entendre d'un bout à l'autre une tragédie lyrique avec le plus grand intérêt?’Footnote ⁵²) Yet one might argue that Philidor did have a ‘prophet’ other than Poinsinet. And, as Manuel Couvreur has shown, it was none other than Diderot himself: ‘Although signed Poinsinet, the libretto of Ernelinde none the less bears the indelible mark of the philosophe and his encyclopedist friends.’ (‘Pour être signé Poinsinet, le livret d'Ernelinde n'en porte pas moins la marque indélébile du philosophe et de ses amis encyclopédistes.’Footnote ⁵³) While at odds with established opinion,Footnote ⁵⁴ Couvreur's conclusions as to Diderot's collaboration with Poinsinet are founded on solid reasoning. Beginning with the testimony of Diderot's contemporaries, Couvreur considers a network of social relations in the French literary world as well as the ideas about music of Diderot, Chastellux, Philidor, Poinsinet and various others. According to Charles Collé, Diderot revealed to one of his friends that he had revised Poinsinet's libretto: ‘I had Ernelinde in my hands for a long while; I cut one hundred and fourteen verses; I removed the ambitious expressions that are too obviously those of a young man; the work seems good to me now, and I dare say that at present M. Poinsinet is one of our own.’ (‘J'ai eu longtemps Ernelinde entre les mains; j'en ai retranché cent quatorze vers; j'en ai ôté les expressions ambitieuses qui sentent trop le jeune homme; actuellement l'ouvrage me paraît bon, et j'ose dire qu'à présent M. Poinsinet est des nôtres.’Footnote ⁵⁵) Though critics have generally followed Assézat in dismissing Collé's remarks as unreliable, Couvreur shows that there are good reasons to take them seriously. Not only is Collé's testimony corroborated by Claude Joseph Dorat, who attributes to Diderot the chorus of the Priests of Mars and the Priestesses of Venus from Act 3, but one might observe that the broader aesthetic innovations associated with Ernelinde, such as its synthesis of French prosody and Italian melody and its attenuation of supernatural elements, are strikingly similar to ideas advocated by Diderot.

We may also note, in addition to Couvreur's analyses, that the chorus from Act 3 reflects a passage from Diderot's Observations sur l'Iphigénie en Tauride de M. Guimont de la Touche, suggesting that the author should have shown ‘the people’ on stage: ‘Thoas is generally a cold character. The author should have replaced him with the people, and had the courage to have the people appear on the stage. The effect would have been entirely different.’ (‘Thoas est, en général, un froid personnage. Il fallait y substituer le peuple, et avoir le courage de faire paraître sur la scène ce peuple. L'effet aurait été bien autre.’Footnote ⁵⁶)

This ‘entirely different’ effect is plausibly something Poinsinet sought to achieve in Ernelinde, particularly in the chorus of the Priests and Priestesses of Mars and Venus. Here the stage directions specifically indicate the presence of the people on stage: ‘CHEFS du PEUPLE, VIEILLARDS, le GRAND-PRÊTRE, SACRIFICATEURS, armés de haches ; la GRANDE-PRÊTRESSE & sa SUITE, PEUPLES’.Footnote ⁵⁷

The originality of this chorus, which, according to Mercure de France, was well received during its first performances,Footnote ⁵⁸ was singled out by Dorat, for whom the distribution of praise is, significantly from the standpoint of the present article, contingent on the question of authorship:

If Diderot had had a hand in revising the libretto of Ernelinde, then it would seem only fair, as Dorat suggests, that he should be given his share of praise – or blame, if it were warranted. In any case, he has received neither, since, after reportedly serving as his mentor, he seems to have preferred to dissociate himself from Poinsinet.

Withholding praise from Poinsinet and offering it to Diderot, Dorat once again reveals the pattern of exclusion in which Poinsinet is blamed for whatever can be criticized in this opera and dissociated from whatever is subject to praise. Even a reader as seemingly unbiased as Couvreur, who brings to light Poinsinet's importance in establishing the new genre and the merits of Ernelinde, still reflects some of the traditional bias against him. While observing at one moment that ‘the role of Poinsinet is capital in the evolution that led comic opera towards elevated subjects’ (‘le rôle de Poinsinet est capital dans l'évolution qui a conduit l'opéra-comique vers les sujets élevés’), he then discounts this role, writing that Philidor ‘had hardly any illusions as to the merits of his librettist’ (‘ne se faisait guère d'illusions sur les mérites de son librettiste’).Footnote ⁶⁰ Without entering into a discussion that would lead us away from our present subject, it seems that anecdotal evidence in support of Philidor's disregard for Poinsinet's merits as a librettist is of little weight compared with the extraordinary success they enjoyed together in the years leading up to Ernelinde, beginning with Sancho Pança dans son île and followed by Le sorcier and Tom Jones. Whereas music historians have sometimes wondered why, given the criticism from figures such as Grimm, Philidor continued to work with Poinsinet, their repeated successes are surely a sufficient explanation in themselves.

While Couvreur contributes to a reassessment of Ernelinde by uncovering Diderot's part in its composition, his assertion that the libretto, though signed Poinsinet, bears the stamp of Diderot and the encyclopedists raises once again the question of Poinsinet's authorship – if not plagiarism, then at least a divestment of authorial control that reduces Poinsinet to a signature, much as he was by Palissot in La Gageure de M. Poinsinet. Whatever their extent or legitimacy, Poinsinet's respective debts towards Diderot and Chastellux are invariably interpreted in a manner detrimental to Poinsinet, even though they could equally be understood as signs of progressiveness or simply good taste.

In contrast to the conceptual framework of a Palissot, in which authors are either copies or originals, Poinsinet appeared relatively unconcerned with authorial independence, equally inclined to assist others in their work or to invite the assistance of others in his own. After all, Poinsinet was asked by La Ribardière to revise La réconciliation villageoise at the time that he asked Sedaine to assist him in revising Tom Jones; Diderot's collaboration on Ernelinde would thus be consistent with Poinsinet's artistic practice.Footnote ⁶¹ And, for an author who has so often been accused of plagiarism, it might surprise us to observe that he had a singular habit of naming his sources, as in the opening words of his Preface to Ernelinde: ‘I have imitated this poem from the Italian’ (‘J'ai imité de l'Italien ce poème’).Footnote ⁶² This is in keeping with acknowledgements he made in Prefaces to La réconciliation villageoise (‘The original idea of this play does not belong to me’ (‘La première idée de cette pièce ne m'appartient pas’Footnote ⁶³)) and to La bagarre (‘I admit at present that I owe to M. Guichard both the original idea and part of the scheme of the Opera Bouffon I am presenting’ (‘J'avoue aujourd'hui que je dois à M. Guichard & la première idée, & une partie du plan de l'Opera Bouffon que je présente’Footnote ⁶⁴)).

Following Diderot's question – ‘And if Philidor had had a prophet other than Poinsinet, would we not know, by the success of Ernelinde, that one could hear a lyrical tragedy from beginning to end with the greatest interest?’ – it should only be necessary to vindicate Poinsinet if it were understood that the opera was not a success. But, as Couvreur observes, in spite of long-standing assumptions to the contrary, we would be mistaken to view Ernelinde as anything other than a triumph in its own time: ‘Though bitterly disputed and discussed, the success of Ernelinde – and this from its creation – is unquestionable. A series of eighteen performances was not such a common thing. The opera roused universal interest and “Louis XV was so charmed by it as to have given the author a pension of six hundred pounds from his purse”.’ (‘Pour avoir été âprement disputé et discuté, le succès d'Ernelinde – et cela dès la création – est incontestable. Une série de 18 représentations n'était pas chose si courante. L'opéra suscita l'intérêt unanime et “Louis XV en fut si charmé qu'il accorda à l'auteur une pension de six cents livres sur sa cassette”.’Footnote ⁶⁵)

The story of Poinsinet is the story of an author whose works were judged from the point of view of his enemies. Just as he was blamed, first by contemporaries and later by historians, for the ‘jokes’ that were played on him,Footnote ⁶⁶ Poinsinet was blamed for what has often wrongly been described as the failure of Ernelinde.Footnote ⁶⁷ A more complete understanding of this opera may be obtained by re-evaluating the contribution of Philidor's librettist.