Comédie mêlée d'ariettes (comedy mixed with brief arias) is a form of French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 opéra comique

Opéra comique

Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...

 that developed in the mid 18th century following the Querelle des Bouffons dispute over the respective merits of the French and Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 styles, between serious drama and comedy in opera.

The best-known ones are Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Gluck

Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck was an opera composer of the early classical period. After many years at the Habsburg court at Vienna, Gluck brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years...

's La rencontre imprévue

La rencontre imprévue

Les pèlerins de la Mecque ou La rencontre imprévue Wq. 32 is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a form of opéra comique, composed in 1763 by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto by Louis Hurtaut Dancourt after the 1726 play by Alain René Lesage and d'Orneval....

, André Ernest Modeste Grétry

André Ernest Modeste Grétry

André Ernest Modeste Grétry was acomposer from the Prince-Bishopric of Liège , who worked from 1767 onwards in France and took French nationality. He is most famous for his opéras comiques....

's Zémire et Azor

Zémire et Azor

Zémire et Azor is an opéra comique, described as a comédie-ballet mêlée de chants et de danses, in four acts by the Belgian composer André Grétry, The French text was by Jean François Marmontel based on La Belle et la bête by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, and Amour pour amour by P. C....

, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny

Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny

Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny was a French composer and a member of the French Académie des Beaux-Arts .He is considered alongside André Grétry and François-André Danican Philidor to have been the founder of a new musical genre, the opéra comique, laying a path for other French composers such as...

's Le déserteur

Le déserteur

Le déserteur is an opéra comique by the French composer Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny with a libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine. It was first staged at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris on 6 March 1769....

and François-André Danican Philidor

François-André Danican Philidor

François-André Danican Philidor , often referred to as André Danican Philidor during his lifetime, was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique...

's Tom Jones

Tom Jones (Philidor)

Tom Jones is a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, a kind of opéra comique, by the French composer François-André Danican Philidor which first appeared at the Comédie-Italienne, Paris on 27 February 1765...

. The form is particularly associated with the work of the librettist Louis Anseaume

Louis Anseaume

Louis Anseaume was a French librettist.He contributed the words for operas by André Ernest Modeste Grétry , Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, Egidio Romualdo Duni, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and François-André Danican Philidor...

.

Sources

• The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5