Opéra-ballet (French:[ɔ.pe.ʁa.ba.lɛ]; plural: opéras-ballets)[1] is a genre of
FrenchBaroque lyric theatre that was most popular during the 18th century,[2] combining elements of
opera and
ballet,[3] "that grew out of the ballets à entrées of the early seventeenth century".[4] It differed from the more elevated tragédie en musique as practised by
Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways. It contained more dance music than the tragédie, and the plots were not necessarily derived from
classical mythology and allowed for the comic elements, which Lully had excluded from the tragédie en musique after Thésée (1675). The opéra-ballet consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts (also known as entrées), often loosely grouped around a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known as actes de ballet.
^Composed by
Pascal Collasse and by
Louis 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, in The Oxford Companion to Music, edited by Alison Latham. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ISBN9780198662129. Also at
Oxford 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.