\n<\/p>\n
At first, Rameau hotly pursued a reluctant Voltaire, who protested in a letter, \u201cI don\u2019t believe I have the talent to write lyrics.\u201d Even after being convinced, Voltaire still dragged his feet, and his work on the text was temporarily derailed when he had to flee Paris for the countryside after the 1734 publication of his dangerously progressive \u201cLettres Philosophiques.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRameau rants, Rameau claims that I\u2019ve cut his throat, that I treat him like a Philistine,\u201d Voltaire complained as the composer demanded an allegorical prologue (then standard in opera) and other adjustments to soften the libretto\u2019s modernizing impulses. Voltaire, for his part, pressured Rameau to break with French convention and write more Italian-type arias: \u201cI want \u2018Samson\u2019 to be in the new style,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
A year after they started, the piece was well enough along to be previewed in a private concert performance. It was dicey, though, to produce stage works on sacred themes in a Catholic country, and the word from the censors was no. Rameau, to Voltaire\u2019s chagrin, grew distracted by other projects, including the sprawling opera-ballet \u201cLes Indes Galantes,\u201d<\/a> in which he might have included some of the music he had just written for \u201cSamson.\u201d (Composers of that era were great self-recyclers.)<\/p>\n Voltaire finally finished the text in 1736, but the censors rejected it again. Rameau was by then onto his next opera, \u201cCastor et Pollux,\u201d for which he likely also borrowed from \u201cSamson.\u201d His work with Voltaire seemed to be over, and a few years later he took a pass on the writer\u2019s new libretto, \u201cPandore.\u201d<\/p>\n But in 1745, Rameau contributed an hour of incidental music to a lightweight play by Voltaire celebrating the marriage of the king\u2019s son. The same year, the two men produced \u2014 with less acrimony than had become their norm \u2014 \u201cLe Temple de la Gloire,\u201d an allegorical commemoration of a French military victory.<\/p>\n But, at least for Voltaire, these pieces paled in comparison to \u201cSamson,\u201d which he said contained sounds both \u201cawe-inspiring and graceful\u201d: \u201cI dare to think that, in spite of a weak text, it was Rameau\u2019s masterpiece.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n