Le Bourgeois gentilhomme

In Molière’s time, the repertoire was not limited to spoken theatre. In the comedy-ballet Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, first performed in 1670, for the court at the Château de Chambord, theatre combines with dance and the music composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully. After the premiere (1680), the Comédie-Française continued to perform the play with its interludes of singing and dancing, thanks to the multi-talented actors of the Troupe. In the eighteenth century, there were even actors from the troupe put in charge of ballet choreography. Because no effort was spared when it came to the audience’s enjoyment, the budgets for comedy-ballets and other popular light comedies concluding with entertainments reached new heights and required the official creation of a ballet master. Due to its cost, the position was abolished in 1799, after musical plays died out during the Revolution.

The Opera and the Comédie-Française then began to collaborate more frequently in the nineteenth century, which was particularly beneficial to Molière’s comedy-ballets, which were the most frequently performed pieces at the time (Le Malade imaginaire and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme). From 1948 onwards, in particular, they benefited from sumptuous productions, notably Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, staged in 1951 with a preciously preserved set, and then on the occasion of two tercentenaries, that of Molière’s death (1973) and that of the founding of the Comédie-Française (1980).

The interweaving of theatre with dance and/or opera initiated by Molière has resulted in a multiplicity of outcomes on the stage of the Comédie-Française since the middle of the twentieth century, with the vaudevillian Feydeau and the satirist Brecht (The Threepenny Opera) entering the repertoire, the production of new choreographic performances (Signature, L’Autre), cabarets (since 2008) or a show that recreates a recording session (Comme une pierre qui...). The last production of Le Bourgeois gentilhomme at the Comédie-Française dates back to 2000.