comédie-ballet
Sign in to saveAlso known as comedie-ballet, comédie galante, comic ballet, tragédie-ballet, tragicomédie et ballet
Comédie-ballet is a genre of French drama which mixes a spoken play with interludes containing music and dance.
~4 min read
Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- History
- ''Comédie-ballet'' and ''comédie lyrique''
- List of comédies-ballets
- Comédies-ballets created by Molière-Lully-Beauchamp
- Comédie-ballet created by Molière-Charpentier-Beauchamp
- Comédie-ballet created by Voltaire and Rameau
- References
Comédie-ballet is a genre of French drama which mixes a spoken play with interludes containing music and dance.
==History== The first example of the genre is considered to be Les fâcheux, with words by Molière, performed in honour of Louis XIV at Vaux-le-Vicomte, the residence of Nicolas Fouquet, in 1661. The music and choreography were by Pierre Beauchamp, but Jean-Baptiste Lully later contributed a sung courante for Act I, scene 3. Molière, Lully and Beauchamp collaborated on several more examples of comédie-ballet, culminating in the masterpiece of the genre, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, in 1670, and the scenically spectacular Psyché of January 1671, a tragicomédie et ballet which went well beyond the earlier examples of the genre.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “comédie-ballet” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.