Opéra-ballet (French:[ɔ.pe.ʁa.ba.lɛ]; plural:opéras-ballets)[1] is a genre ofFrenchBaroque lyric theatre that was most popular during the 18th century,[2] combining elements ofopera andballet,[3] "that grew out of theballets à entrées of the early seventeenth century".[4] It differed from the more elevatedtragédie en musique as practised byJean-Baptiste Lully in several ways. It contained more dance music than thetragédie, and the plots were not necessarily derived fromclassical mythology and allowed for the comic elements, which Lully had excluded from thetragédie en musique afterThésée (1675). Theopéra-ballet consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts (also known asentrées), often loosely grouped around a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known asactes de ballet.
^Composed byPascal Collasse and byLouis Lully, possibly by also borrowing from the late (that is, Jean-Baptiste) Lully (Pitou 1983, pp. 308–309 "Les Saisons").
Bellingham, Jane (2002). "opéra-ballet", p. 862, inThe Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN9780198662129. Also atOxford Music Online (subscription required).
Pitou, Spire (1983).The Paris Opéra. An Encyclopedia of Operas, Ballets, Composers, and Performers – Genesis and Glory, 1671-1715. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.ISBN9780313214202.
Warrack, John; West, Ewan (1992).The Oxford Dictionary of Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press.ISBN9780198691648.
