Every week this year I'm posting a letter by either Émilie du Châtelet or Voltaire, while composer Nicholas Gentile develops the new Australian opera on universal themes: Émilie & Voltaire. Here is Voltaire writing to librettist François-Augustin de Paradis de Moncrif. The image shows the opera house in Nancy.

'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 things had gone, and I heard excellent news. 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.'