The music composed for theatrical productions at the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Paris shaped the urban popular song tradition of vaudeville, or popular songs that circulated in urban Paris with often satirical and subversive texts commenting on public affairs. Out of Évariste Gherardi’s six volumes of repertoire from the Comédie-Italienne, twenty-six songs originating in the theater appear in chansonniers collecting the texts (and sometimes music) of the vaudeville tradition. A ribald parody of Jean-Gille, Gilli joli Jean from the 1697 play Pasquin et Marforio, Médecins des mærs printed in the Maurepas Chansonnier demonstrates the appeal of using such innuendo-laden theater music to comment on public scandal. It is also a useful case study in tracing the origin of a vaudeville tune back to its original form. The vaudeville Les Trembleurs presents a notable case of a vaudeville originating from an opera, Lully’s Isis (1677), before itself being absorbed into the Comédie-Italienne repertoire in 1693. Musical finales from the Comédie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne, which were very often structured as highly repetitive strophic tunes, were frequently turned into vaudevilles collected in chansonniers. The plays of Florent Carton Dancourt and Jean-Claude Gillier at the Comédie-Française also frequently included similar strophic tunes at the end of their divertissements, several of which also “ran in the streets” as vaudevilles. The dynamic relationship between Parisian theaters and the vaudeville tradition was mutually beneficial. Theatrical songs that became vaudevilles acted as effective word-of-mouth advertisement for the productions themselves, and after the closure of the Comédie-Italienne, the vaudeville repertory reemerged in fairground theater, giving birth to French comic opera.

Works: Anonymous: Jean-Gille, Gille joli Jean printed in Maurepas Chansonnier (426-30), Les Trembleurs (430-34); André Campra: Hésione (442-45).

Sources: Dufresny and Claude-Ignace Brugière de Barante: Jean-Gille, Gille joli Jean from Pasquin et Marforio, Médecins des mæurs (426-30); Lully: Isis (430-34); Dancourt and Gillier: La Foire de Bezons (439-45).

Index Classifications: 1600s, 1700s

Contributed by: Matthew Van Vleet