However, with the establishment in 1672 of King Louis XIV's Académie royale de Musique (popularly known as the Opéra) under Jean-Baptiste Lully, the use of music by fair troupes was significantly curtailed.

The players next tried including vaudeville airs via audience participation: the musicians would play a popular tune, and the spectators would sing, while the actors remained silent.

For an annual fee the troupes obtained the right to perform light comedies interspersed with songs and dances and to use sets and theatre machines.

The first work officially given that designation was Télémaque (a parody of the opera by André Cardinal Destouches), which was first performed by the Théâtre de la Foire Saint-Germain in 1715.

[6][10] In 1716 one of the troupes' leaders, Catherine Vanderberg purchased additional rights and began to present more original works by authors, such as Jacques-Philippe d'Orneval, Alexis Piron, and Louis Fuzelier.

After working briefly in Lyon, and mounting unsuccessful productions in Dijon (1746) and London (1749), he was able to repurchase the Opéra-Comique privilège in December 1751 and remained its director until 1757.

[12] During his second period as director, Monnet continued to work with Favart and Noverre, and Boucher designed and built a substantial new theatre for the company of the Foire Saint-Laurent in 1752.

The theatre was later installed in a wing of the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs on the rue Bergère, where it was used by the Opéra in 1781,[13] and then as the first concert hall of the Paris Conservatory, which was founded on the same site in 1795.

Monnet's friend Jean-Joseph Vadé wrote the libretto for Les troqueurs, first staged in July 1753 and advertised as a translation of an Italian work.

French opéra comique, in the 19th century at least, was not necessarily "comic" either in the classical sense of ending happily or the modern one of being funny; the term covered a much wider category of work.

[19] In 1840, the Opéra-Comique company settled in the second Salle Favart (architect Louis Charpentier; 1,500 seats), built on the site of the first theatre, destroyed by fire in 1838.

[23] At the start of the 1960s Stéphane Wolff, claimed that the theatre could regain its independence: "well-managed, it could again become what it was for so long, the most active and therefore the leading lyric stage in France".

Although the company of the Opéra-Comique was disbanded (followed 20 years later by the closure of the opéra comique classes at the Paris Conservatoire),[24] from 1978 works were staged again at the theatre, both from its traditional repertoire (Le médecin malgré lui and Werther)[25] as well as more adventurous repertoire: La chatte anglaise in 1984, Denisov's L'Écume des Jours, as well as productions with international stars, including Jessye Norman as Dido in 1984.

Although its budget amounted to less than most provincial French opera houses, the first new director of the independent Opéra-Comique, Thierry Fouquet, attempted to run a balanced programme but handed over in 1994 to Pierre Médecin, who was responsible for the centenary season in 1998 with a new production of Pelléas et Mélisande.

In common with many other opera houses the Opéra-Comique also offers relayed performances to cinemas (around France and in Europe); Carmen in June 2009 and Béatrice et Bénédict in March 2010.

In 2013 an opera critic was moved to write that of Paris lyric theatres "over the past seven seasons, [the Opéra-Comique] has best succeeded in establishing a particular identity and achieving consistent quality in its productions".

[29] After the works, the theatre reopened in 2017,[30] with the first stage production since the composer's death of Marais's Alcione (on 25 April 2017) with Jordi Savall conducting Le Concert des Nations.