Œdipe à Colone
opera by Antonio Sacchini
Œdipe à Colone (French pronunciation: [edip a kɔlɔn]) is an operatic tragédie lyrique by Antonio Sacchini first performed at Versailles on 4 January 1786 in the presence of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The libretto, by Nicolas-François Guillard, is based on the play Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. The premiere, intended to inaugurate the new theatre at Versailles, was not a success, possibly due to the quality of the performances, the staging, or the acoustics. Marie Antoinette promised Sacchini a better production at Fontainebleau in the autumn, but the Affair of the Diamond Necklace meant she was unable to have her wish. The news that the production was cancelled is said to have hastened the death of the already seriously ill composer on October 9, 1786. Œdipe was given a posthumous performance by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin on February 1, 1787. This time the audience was warmly appreciative and the opera became one of the most popular pieces in the repertoire for several decades, reaching a total of almost 600 performances by 1844.
Roles
Synopsis
Background
The plot is based on the myth of Oedipus, King of Thebes. Oedipus has been expelled from the city after it was revealed he had killed his father and married his mother. Now blind and aged he wanders through Greece accompanied only by his daughter Antigone.
“Œdipe à Colone” enters the record as opera by Antonio Sacchini. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Œdipe, Colone and opera can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q732629. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1786, 1787 and 1844.
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This entry incorporates text from “Œdipe à Colone” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.