Renaud Tragedie Lyrique en Trois Actes Representée pour la premiere fois par l'Academie Royale de Musique le Mardi 25 Fevrier 1783 / Dédiée a la Reine Mis en Musique / Par M. Sacchini. Prix 24th / Gravée par Huguet Musicien de la Comédie Italienne. Folio (12 3/4 x 10 in). 243pp. Engraved title in border. Full musical score engraved by Huguet and printed by Basset. Late 18th-century French full crimson crushed morocco, engraved in gilt MADAME LA BARONNE DE MONTESQUIOU to front cover, with four gilt cornerpieces of flowers in vase on both covers, flat spine gilt musically themed tooling to five spine panels with gilt-title RENAUD, inner-gilt dentelles, blue paste endpapers.  Some minor worming outside of the plate, overall a fine and well-preserved copy.

This was Antonio Sacchini's first opera for the French stage and he had the fortunate support of the French queen, Marie Antoinette, his patron and to whom he dedicated this work.  Composed and performed at the French Royal Academy of Music by the librettists Giovanni de Gamerra (1743-1803), Simon-Joseph Pellegrin (1663-1745), and Jean Joseph la Boeuf (ca. 1730-1799), and was arranged by Nicolas Etienne Framery (1745-1810). Although Renaud did not enjoy immediate success, it went on to be performed frequently in Paris, as much as 130 times and enjoyed a brief revival as late as 1815.  It was printed in 1783, by Chez Le Duc, but also appeared with the various imprints from Paris for "Chez l'Auteur," "P. de Lormel," and "Chez Mlle Castagnery." A manuscript copy remains in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (shelfmark A-296a[1-3]). This a rather rare example with the Chez Le Duc imprint, OCLC located copies at Brigham Young University and the University of North Texas.

This copy was bound for Madame la Baronne de Montesquiou [Jeanne Marie Hocquart de Montfermeil (1743-1792)], an important French noblewoman from Gascony, who married Anne-Pierre, Marquis de Montesquiou-Fézensac (1739-1798) in 1760 at the age of seventeen.  Presumably a patron of the arts, in addition to being a book collector, she was recipient of several honors, addresses, and dedications in her lifetime, found in poems in the Journal de Lyon printed in 1781 and also honored at a classical symphony in 1781 by Jean-François Tapray, also the subject of a portrait painted by the famed artist Elisabeth Vigée le Brun.