Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian provides a few helpful starting-points for a discussion about the history of Luigi Cherubini’s song collection that is the subject of this critical edition. According to the renowned French dramatist and fabulist the young Italian musician, already famous for successes in his homeland, interrupted the writing of a large-scale composition entrusted to him by one of France’s most important literary figures, in order to devote himself to the Estelle romances.

Cherub...