Street puppeteers used trained animals in their shows for a long time. The most famous was Brioché's monkey Fagotin, dressed in a lackey's livery and equipped with a sword without a point. According to the Combat de Cyrano de Bergerac avec le singe de Brioché, au bout du Pont-Neuf, a text written around 1650 and published in 1704, it was killed by a sword blow from the writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655).

This is the second opera created by La Grille with the Troupe Royale des Pygmées, in November 1676. On the title page of the printed copy kept at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the word "tragédie" is crossed out and replaced by "pastorale".