Opéra comique

The genre originated in the early 18th century with humorous and satirical plays performed at the theatres of the Paris fairs which contained songs (vaudevilles), with new words set to already existing music.

In the middle of the 18th century, composers began to write original music to replace the vaudevilles, under the influence of the lighter types of Italian opera (especially Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona).

As Elizabeth Bartlet and Richard Langham Smith note in their Grove article on the subject, composers and librettists frequently rejected the use of the umbrella term opéra comique in favor of more precise labels.

In spite of fierce opposition from rival theatres the venture flourished and leading playwrights of the time, including Alain-René Lesage and Alexis Piron, contributed works in the new form.

In 1752, Rousseau produced a short opera influenced by Pergolesi, Le Devin du village, in an attempt to introduce his ideas of musical simplicity and naturalness to France.

The next year, the head of the Saint Laurent theatre, Jean Monnet, commissioned the composer Antoine Dauvergne to produce a French opera in the style of La serva padrona.

Dauvergne's opera, with a simple plot, everyday characters, and Italianate melodies, had a huge influence on subsequent opéra comique, setting a fashion for composing new music, rather than recycling old tunes.

[1][5] The short, catchy melodies which replaced the vaudevilles were known as ariettes and many opéras comiques in the late 18th century were styled comédies mêlées d'ariettes.

Duni, an Italian working at the francophile court of Parma, composed Le peintre amoureux de son modèle in 1757 with a libretto by Anseaume.

He was a versatile composer who expanded the range of opéra comique to cover a wide variety of subjects from the Oriental fairy tale Zémire et Azor (1772) to the musical satire of Le jugement de Midas (1778) and the domestic farce of L'amant jaloux (also 1778).

In 1793, the name of the Comédie-Italienne was changed to the Opéra-Comique, but it no longer had a monopoly on performing operas with spoken dialogue and faced serious rivalry from the Théâtre Feydeau, which also produced works in the opéra comique style.