In this book, seventeen specialists from different backgrounds, from the history of literature and music, linguistics or stylistics, study the "fabrication" of lyrics in France in the classical period, seeking to penetrate the working practices of poets and composers in order to shed light on the creative mysteries of opera.

These multiple insights make it possible to retrace the main lines of a history of sung poetry, and to contextualise the production of works and the evolution of genres of the time, from psalms, recitatives or airs for the ballet, to opera librettos, which constitute one of the high points of the practices of the Grand Siècle.

This vast survey should be of particular interest to scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – musicologists, literary historians and specialists in the history of theatre – and to interpreters of French baroque music.

The book brings together studies by Olivier Bettens, Céline Bohnert, Emmanuel Bury, Benoît de Cornulier, Jean Duron, Georgie Durosoir, Thierry Favier, Alain Génetiot, Michel Gribenski, Isabelle His, Thomas Leconte, Raphaëlle Legrand, Stéphane Macé, Catherine Massip, Benjamin Pintiaux, Théodora Psychoyou, Jean Vignes and Brigitte Van Wymeersch.

Anne-Madeleine Goulet is a researcher at the CNRS. Her field of research is located at the frontier of literature, musicology and the history of ideas, and concerns theatre, poetry and music of the seventeenth century.

Laura Naudeix teaches literature and theatre history at the Université Catholique de l'Ouest in Angers. A specialist in French opera of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she studies in particular the dramaturgy of musical and choreographic performance.