Les élémens

Les Élémens (The Elements), or Ballet des élémens, is an opéra-ballet by the French composers André Cardinal Destouches and Michel Richard Delalande (or de Lalande). It has a prologue and four entrées (as well as, originally, a celebratory epilogue later removed). The libretto was written by Pierre-Charles Roy. It was styled "the third ballet danced by the king" because the 11-year-old Louis XV performed dance divertissements in it, as he had already done in the previous ballets, L'inconnu by various authors (including Delalande and Destouches), and Les folies de Cardenio by Delalande, both staged at court in 1720.