Antoine Gautier de Montdorge, who wrote the libretto, is a friend of Rameau's patron Alexandre Le Riche de La Poupelinière.

His libretto had come in for heavy criticism and the second entrée had had to be revised with the aid of Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, who had written the words for Rameau's first opera, Hippolyte et Aricie.

In spite of the weak libretto, the work is an immediate success and becomes one of Rameau's most popular operas, enjoying eighty performances in its first year.

Zaïde, reine de Grenade (Zaïde, Queen of Grenada) is a ballet-héroïque written by Joseph-Nicolas-Pancrace Royer, to a text by the Abbé de La Marre.

Zaïde is first performed, under the direction of the composer, on September 3, 1739 for the wedding of King Louis XV's daughter, when it runs for forty-four performances.

Rameau’s Dardanus, an opera in five acts, with a French libretto by Charles-Antoine Leclerc de La Bruère, is first performed on November 19, 1739, at the Académie de musique in Paris.

It receives twenty-six performances, mainly because of the support from Rameau's followers in the dispute between the styles of Rameau and Lully.

Critics accuse Rameau's original opera of lacking a coherent plot.

The inclusion of the sea monster also violates the French operatic convention of having a clear purpose for encounters with supernatural beings.