For the staging of Odipe à Colone Antonio Sacchini could count on the support of Marie Antoinette Queen of France, who wanted to inaugurate, with this opera, the new theatre of Versailles on 4th January 1786. Due to inadequate machinery and some poor performances, however, success was not what had been expected. To console Sacchini of the near-failure, the Queen promised him to have Odipe repeated under better circumstances in the autumn, at Fontainebleau with the company of the Opéra, but the terrible events of the necklace affair made her too vulnerable to impose her choice. Already gravely ill, the composer took the news very badly: he died a few days later, in the night of October 8th, 1786. The première of Odipe à Colone took place on 1st February 1787 at Paris’s Opéra, in front of a full house. It was a triumph. Odipe à Colone kept reaping exceptional success up until 1844, reaching almost 600 performances and enthusing renowned composers such as Piccini and Berlioz.