International audience The genesis of Rameau’s Linus remains one of the more obscure elements of the composer’s biography. All that remains of this unfinished opera are the manuscript libretto and first violin part, while little is known about the circumstances of its creation and its eventual abandonment after several rehearsals. The discovery of an unpublished letter to Rameau from the abbé François-Joachim de Bernis, together with a re-examination of the correspondence of the duc de Choiseul-Stainville, hitherto neglected by musicologists, provides new evidence on the composition of this ill-starred opera and on the literary and social milieux within which Rameau created his dramatic works. In the light of these new sources, the present chapter re-examines the history of this tragédie en musique, thereby opening up important new perspectives on the gestation of one of the least documented of Rameau’s operas.