About the work
Tarare is a tragédie lyrique with a prologue and five acts by Antonio Salieri, set to the only opera libretto Pierre Beaumarchais ever wrote. It premiered at the Paris Opéra on 8 June 1787; Beaumarchais had barred access to rehearsals and mounted such a sweeping publicity campaign that some four hundred guards were needed to control the crowds at the premiere.
Plot
The despotic ruler Atar of Ormus, envious of the people's love for his valiant general Tarare, burns down his house and has his wife Astasie abducted. With the help of the eunuch Calpigi, Tarare infiltrates the palace and is condemned to death, but a military revolt topples the tyrant, who takes his own life; the people raise Tarare to the throne.
Cultural significance
Beaumarchais's message that a person's worth lies not in birth but in virtue made Tarare a widely cited manifesto of the Enlightenment on the eve of the French Revolution. With 33 performances in 1787 alone, the work was a resounding success, and Salieri later reworked it into the Italian version Axur, re d'Ormus.