Comédie-ballet

A kind of comedic entertainment which included a large element of ballet; most popular in the 17th and 18th centuries in France. Its most famous exponents were Molière and Lully.

Theatrical genre invented by Molière for court performance. It combines comedy or farce with interludes of song, dance, and music derived from the ballet de cour. The first such piece was Les Fâcheux, performed at Vaux-le-Vicomte for Fouquet in 1661. Comédies-ballets make up a large part of Molière's work, including such well-known plays (now often performed with the ballet element scaled down) as George Dandin, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, and Le Malade imaginaire, for which Lully wrote the music.

[Peter France]