Queen Marie Antoinette, who loved and cultivated the arts, had promised Sacchini that "Oedipe" would be the first opera to be performed at the court theatre after its transfer to Fontainebleau. Sacchini had shared the good news with us and continued his habit of meeting Her Majesty after she had heard mass, when she invited him to join her in her music salon. There she took pleasure in listening to some of the finest excerpts from "Arvire et Évélina", the opera words by Guillard on which he was then working. Having noticed that, for several Sundays in a row, the Queen seemed to avoid catching his eye, Sacchini – tormented with anxiety – deliberately placed himself in her way so that Her Majesty had no choice but to speak with him. She received him in the music salon and told him, in a voice full of emotion: 'My dear Sacchini, people say I show too much favour to foreigners. They have pressured me so strongly to have Monsieur Lemoyne's "Phèdre" performed instead of your "Œdipe" that I could not refuse. You see the position I am in, please forgive me.'