L’Opéra-comique en vaudevilles: parodie et usure des séries

Part of a larger cultural enquiry into serial phenomena in French classical literature, this article describes, and offers a number of hypotheses to explain, the decline of the use of vaudevilles (that is, familiar tunes used to carry part or all of the dialogue of some non-tragic plays) in the productions of the Fair theatres and the Théâtre Italien between the 1730s and 1789. In particular it proposes firm links between this decline and the movement of public taste towards moralising and uplift in the theatre. It consequently raises, rather than answers, the question of the relationship between Enlightenment and the trend away from theatrical satire.