Abstract EN:

Dramatic opera parody, a comic rewriting of a lyric work created at the Royal Academy of Music, is a genre truly born in the eighteenth century at the fairground theatres. It spreads rapidly to almost all the Parisian theatres: the Opéra-Comique, Comédie-Italienne, fairground theatres for marionettes, the boulevards, court theatres, receiving the condemnation of some and the support of professional parodists (Fuzelier, Favart, etc. ) and illustrious amateurs (Louis XVI and his brother). Based on the corpus of two hundred and fifty-three dramatic opera parodies that we have inventoried up to the end of the theatre privileges (1791), we propose a periodisation of the genre which will serve as a framework for the analysis of the theories of its contemporaries, whether they be practitioners or historians, and for a reflection on the production and diffusion of a practice considered ephemeral. An examination of the evolution of opera parody allows one to see how during the century it takes on different dramatic forms (pantomime, pastiche, etc. ) and musical forms (vaudevilles, ariettes, musical parodies); it is significant that it evolves according to the genres that it targets (“tragédie en musique”, ballet opera, lyric pastoral, lyric drama, etc. ) from the critical play to the burlesque opera. . Witness to the evolution of opera (from Rameau to Gluck and passing by the Querelle des Bouffons) and of the opéra-comique, dramatic opera parody maintains its status as a musical and lyric comic genre and becomes one of the guardians of vaudeville. While belief tended toward the decline of the genre, we demonstrate how much the parodies are present at the eve of the Revolution, matched with a philosophical or moral impact.