Derived from court ballet, in vogue at the time of the Valois dynasty, and Italian opera, introduced to France by Cardinal Mazarin, French opera was born at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV with the founding, in 1669, of the first “Académie d’opéra”. This new institution, destined to play a central role in French musical life, would also participate in expanding France’s cultural influence. To celebrate the 350th anniversary of France’s first operatic stage, the French National Library and the Paris Opera have retraced the work of the Royal Academy of Music from the time of the Sun King up until the demise of the Ancien Régime. Thanks to a hundred or so exhibits from the National Library, a number of French museums and the National Archives (handwritten scores, set and costume models, opera house plans and administrative documents, etc.) the spectator is invited to witness the emergence of the “French taste” which was to find its place in an equivocal relationship between national ambition and its aspirations towards the Italian model.