The storyline of the opera is fashioned from the fanciful legend told by Pierre Bourdelot in his 1715 Histoire de la musique. Interest in Stradella in Paris had been growing in 1830s Paris, after the musician François-Joseph Fétis had included an aria, (supposedly by Stradella but actually by Fétis himself), in an 1833 concert; the melody soon became extremely popular. In July 1836 the Revue et gazette musicale, run by Maurice Schlesinger, had serialised a work by Jules Janin, Stradella, or the Poet and the Musician, as 'advance publicity' (Schlesinger was to publish Niedermeyer's score in 1837). Moreover, a vaudeville with music by Flotow on the same subject opened in Paris a month before Niedermeyer's opera.