Comédie en vaudevilles

The comédie en vaudevilles (French: [kɔmedi ɑ̃ vodvil]) was a theatrical entertainment which began in Paris towards the end of the 17th century, in which comedy was enlivened through lyrics using the melody of popular vaudeville songs.

The annual fairs of Paris at St. Germain and St. Laurent had developed theatrical variety entertainments, with mixed plays, acrobatic displays, and pantomimes, typically featuring vaudevilles (see Théâtre de la foire). Gradually these features began to invade established theatres. The Querelle des Bouffons (War of the Clowns), a dispute amongst theatrical factions in Paris in the 1750s, in part reflects the rivalry of this form, as it evolved into opéra comique, with the Italian opera buffa. Comédie en vaudevilles also seems to have influenced the English ballad opera and the German Singspiel.

One feature of the comédie en vaudevilles which later found its way into opera was the vaudeville final, a strophic finale in which the characters assemble at the end of the piece with each singing a short verse, often ending with a refrain which everyone would sing, and a final verse with the entire ensemble joining in. Typically the first verse provides the moral of the story, while the intervening verses comment on particular events in the plot, and the final verse appeals directly to audience for its indulgence. Sometimes the verses were also interspersed with dances. and Don Giovanni (1788), as well as later works, such as Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816), Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury (1875), Verdi's Falstaff (1893), Ravel's L'heure espagnole (1911) and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951).

In the course of the XIXth century, the most popular vaudeville author in France was Eugène Scribe, who developed the genre in so-called " well-made plays". Gradually, the French vaudeville evolved into a type of comic play where music was less prominent, or disappeared altogether. Prominent authors of vaudeville in France during the late XIXth century and early XXth century include Eugène Labiche and Georges Feydeau, who focused on satires of bourgeois life. Whereas the word vaudeville remains associated with musical theatre and variety entertainment in the English-speaking world, in France it came to refer exclusively to a category of farce—often qualifying as a bedroom farce— that is commonly associated with boulevard theatre venues.