(Fr.: ‘fair theatres’).
The name by which the troupes performing at the two Paris fairs, the Foire St Germain and the Foire St Laurent, in the 17th and 18th centuries, were commonly known. The fairs were important in the history of the musical stage in the late 17th century as the sites for the comédie en vaudevilles, out of which grew the musically more elaborate opéra comique. The Foire St Germain was located about where the Hôtel des Examens and the Marché St Germain are now; by the end of the 17th century it always opened on 3 February and ended on Palm Sunday. The Gare de l’Est now occupies the approximate site of the Foire St Laurent, whose season was somewhat variable, generally lasting from July to the end of September.
The fairs had been the scene of popular farces, acrobatic displays and animal shows since the Middle Ages and, after 1642, of marionette plays. Before the 1670s, when they were limited by the restrictive patents granted to Lully, these spectacles made extensive use of accompanying musical instruments, as appears from Scarron’s poem La Foire St Germain (1643):
Le
bruit des pénétrants sifflets,
Des flûtes et des flageolets,
Des cornets, hautbois et musettes …
In 1678 the Foire St Germain came under the direction of the acrobats Claude and Pierre Alard and Maurice van der Beeck. Their first theatrical production, Les forces de l’amour et de la magie, pleased the king, and they were granted a patent to present ‘jumping acts accompanied by some discourse … with the condition that there be no singing or dancing’ (4 February 1679).
In 1697, when the Comédie-Italienne was suppressed and its actors expelled from France, the Théâtres de la Foire quickly appropriated its large repertory (published in 1694 by Evaristo Gherardi as Théâtre italien), thereby filling the gap left by Arlequin and Scaramouche. The musical content of these comedies consisted of original compositions (overtures, dances, dramatic symphonies), vaudevilles and extended parodies of the most popular Lully operas. In 1699 (20 and 27 February) the Théâtres de la Foire felt the full force of their main antagonist, the Comédie-Française. The forains were forbidden to perform entire comedies or farces, but they circumvented this by performing fragments; when all dialogues were forbidden in 1707, the forains converted to monologues. In 1708 Guyenet, director of the Opéra, gave them permission to use songs, dances and scenery changes, but in 1710 this privilege was revoked, and the forains were reduced to using large placards (‘écritaux’) displaying each performer’s text, at first in prose and later in couplets (stanzas in French poetry). With the Opéra’s permission these couplets were set to popular vaudeville tunes. The orchestra, which by 1714 consisted of nine or ten instruments, played the tunes, the audience sang the words and the actors performed in mime. A.-R. LeSage created the vaudeville almost singlehandedly in his Arlequin roi de Sérendib (1713) (Heartz, 1985). In 1716, in return for an annual payment of 35,000 livres, the Opéra permitted the Théâtres de la Foire to give ‘spectacles mixed with music, dance and symphonies under the name of Opéra-Comique’. This term had first appeared on publicity notices in 1715, and the first work to bear the title was LeSage's Télémaque, a parody of Destouches’ opera. On the opening day of the Opéra-Comique at the Foire St Laurent (25 July 1715) ‘the Comédie and the Opéra were deserted’, according to the Mercure de France. The Comédie-Française retaliated; from November 1718 to 1724 only marionette shows and tight-rope dancers were allowed at the Théâtres de la Foire. In 1716 a troupe of Italian players under the direction of Luigi Riccobini was summoned by the Regent to Paris. They were known as the Nouveau Théâtre Italien and took up residence in the Hôtel de Bourgogne in the Marais. The Nouveau Théâtre Italien took advantage of the new round of restrictions mentioned above and filled the gap at La Foire St Laurent with regular performances from 1721 to 1723.
The most productive years of the early Opéra-Comique began after its return to the Foire St Germain in 1724. Its repertory from 1724 to 1737 appears in the ten volumes of LeSage and D’Orneval’s Le Théâtre de la Foire ou l’opéra comique. These plays continued to depend heavily on vaudevilles, although descriptive symphonies, dances, overtures and vaudeville finales were common. In addition to supplying original music, the most important task of the first generation of opéra comique composers (including Mouret, Gillier, Aubert, Dornel, Corrette and, early in his career, Rameau) was to arrange the vaudevilles and to provide them with orchestral accompaniments. The playwrights (chiefly LeSage, D’Orneval, Fuzelier, Piron and, later, Favart) selected the vaudeville tunes from the large number available and often used the same tune repeatedly for a specific situation until it became associated with that situation from play to play. Parfaict, in his Dictionnaire, noted that the ‘vaudevilles translate with minute exactitude successive degrees of the same sentiment and the most rapid, minute shifts within one action. Thus … the pursuit of a kiss could scarcely be posed’.
The Opéra-Comique flourished until 1744, the second year of Jean Monnet’s directorship, when it was again suppressed by the Comédie-Française. In 1752 it reopened, remaining under Monnet until 1758, when the privilege passed to a group including Favart and Delresse. In 1762 the Opéra-Comique merged with the Comédie-Italienne, transferring its operations to the Hôtel de Bourgogne.
See also Paris, §III, 3
AnthonyFB
GroveO (‘Paris’, §§2(iii), 3(i); R. Harris-Warrick)
A. Lesage and D’Orneval: Le Théâtre de la Foire (Amsterdam and Paris, 1722–34; Amsterdam and Paris, 1723–31)
C. and F. Parfaict: Histoire du théâtre françois depuis son origine jusqu’à présent (Amsterdam, 1734–49)
C. and F. Parfaict: Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire des spectacles de la foire (Paris, 1743)
C. and F. Parfaict: Dictionnaire des théâtres de Paris (Paris, 1756/R. 2/1767, with G. d'Abguerbe )
J.A.J. Desboulmiers: Histoire de théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique (Paris, 1770)
J. Bonassies: Les spectacles forains et la comédie française (Paris, 1875)
E. Campardon: Les spectacles de la Foire (Paris, 1877/R)
E. D'Auriac: Le Théâtre de la foire (Paris, 1878)
A. Heulhard: La Foire St Laurent: son histoire et ses spectacles (Paris, 1878)
V. Barberet: Lesage et le Théâtre de la Foire (Nancy, 1887/R)
A. Font: Favart: l’opéra comique et la comédie-vaudeville aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1894/R)
M. Albert: Les Théâtres de la foire (1660–1789) (Paris, 1900)
P. Fromageot: La foire Saint-Germain-des-Près (Paris, 1902)
G. Cucuel: ‘Sources et documents pour servir à l'histoire de l'Opéra-Comique en France’, L'année musicale, iii (1913), 247–82
G. Cucuel: Les créateurs de l’opéra-comique français (Paris, 1914)
E. Genest: L'Opéra-Comique connu et inconnu (Paris, 1925)
F.J. Carmody: Le répertoire de l’opéra-comique en vaudevilles de 1708 à 1764 (Berkeley, 1933)
D.J. Grout: The Origins of the ‘opéra-comique’ (diss., Harvard U., 1939)
C. Barnes: The ‘Théâtre de la Foire’ (Paris, 1697–1762): its Music and Composers (diss., U. of Southern California, 1965)
C. Barnes: ‘Instruments and Instrumental Music at the “Théâtres de la Foire” (1697–1762)’, RMFC, v (1965), 142–68
M. Spaziani: Il Teatro de la foire (Rome, 1965)
N. Wild: ‘Aspects de la musique sous la régence. Les Foires: naissance de l’opéra-comique’, RMFC, v (1965), 129–41
C. Barnes: ‘Vocal Music at the “Théâtres de la Foire” 1697–1762, i: Vaudeville’, RMFC, viii (1968), 141–60
D.S. Packer: ‘La Calotte and the 18th-Century French Vaudeville’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 61–83
H. Lagrave: Le théâtre et le public à Paris de 1715 à 1750 (Paris, 1972)
G. Sadler: ‘Rameau, Piron and the Parisian Fair Theatres’, Soundings, iv (1974), 13–29
J. Gourret: Histoire de l'Opéra-Comique (Paris, 1978)
D. Heartz: ‘Terpsichore at the Fair: Old and New Dance Airs in Two Vaudeville Comedies by Lesage’, Music and Context: Essays for John M. Ward, ed. A.D. Shapiro and P. Benjamin (Cambridge, MA, 1985), 278–304
R.M. Isherwood: Farce and Fantasy: Popular Entertainment in Eighteenth-Century Paris (New York, 1986)
M. Barthélemy: ‘L'opéra-comique des origines à la Querelle des Bouffons’, L'opéra-comique en France au XVIIIe siècle, ed. P. Vendrix (Liège, 1992), 10–78
JAMES R. ANTHONY