Based on the story of Cupid and Psyche, the opera premiered on January 18, 1800 at the Hoftheater (Herzöglichestheater) in Stuttgart.
The premiere of the opera was in German, in a translation by Max Kalbeck, at the Hoftheater in Munich on December 4, 1909.
In 1889 Richard Strauss made a new arrangement of the work for the publisher Adolph Fürstner, which was later staged in Weimar at the Hoftheater on 9 June 1900, under the Goethe-inspired title of Iphigenie auf Tauris.
The first performance was at the Kurfürstliches Hoftheater in Kassel on 28 July 1823 under the direction of the composer.
The first time he received national attention was through the production of his Trilogy of Terror in 1997 at Kampnagel in Hamburg and Hoftheater Gostner in Nuremberg (Antigone by Sophocles, The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, Leonce and Lena by Georg Büchner).