Letters from Émilie & Voltaire

Murder at Cirey is set in 1735, two years after Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire met. He claimed to remember her as a girl, but their first fateful encounter as adults was at the opera in Paris in 1733: Moncrif’s The Empire of Love. Voltaire was a poet, playwright and librettist; Émilie, a mathematician and physicist, also played the harpsichord and sang whole operas by heart. Every now and then I'd like to give you an extract from their letters: on music, the theatre, natural philosophy, Paris, Cirey, friends … and love. This is from April 1733 to Voltaire's friend, the lyricist Moncrif.

'You’re the only person in the world capable of thinking about other people’s doings in the midst of all you have to do yourself. Rest assured, I’m full of gratitude. The opera went very well yesterday. I went along at the end, to see how the performance had gone, and heard some good things. The audience is looking forward to the changes to the third act. But the music will need to be very lively and striking. My credit with the ch. de B. [the composer, the Chevalier de Brassac] consists solely in my tender devotion to him. In no way am I a connoisseur of music, but I do have ears and I can see what audiences like, and I venture to beg our amiable chevalier, on behalf of those audiences, to augment the sweetness, grace and gallantry of his music with a little vivacity and tumult. If the third act delivers the brilliant effect that it should, I’m hoping for fifty performances. Ah, what fun we’ll have, confounding the fools and the scoffers! In that pleasant hope I remain the tenderest and most zealous of your servants. V.'