Chapter 5 offers an account of how vaudevilles were introduced on the Fair theatre stage, and how they were developed as an operatic medium. ‘Raw Materials’ provides contexts for understanding what vaudevilles were and how they were transmitted. ‘Vaudevilles on stage’ uses official reports to build a history of process: how musical dialogue in vaudevilles evolved from 1709. ‘Lyric pantomime’ formed an intermediate stage. Contemporary reactions to Italian recitative are used as a deductive basis for imagining vaudevilles in sound; the enquiry is extended in ‘Accompaniment’ and ‘Continuity’ by historical evidence and through scrutiny of Le Théâtre de la Foire, but also by the author’s report made of a 1991 performance. Historical evidence suggests that performance in Paris was regularly dialogic and spontaneous, not tied to fixed keys or accompaniment, but also sometimes lyrical. Highly expressive vaudevilles were sometimes grouped to form either narrative or sentimental scenes in operas by Lesage and d’Orneval, some works having affinity with common tropes in contemporary novels. ‘La Chercheuse d’esprit’ is an account of Favart’s famous vaudeville opera, here interpreted through unique performative information deduced from a manuscript in the Bibliothèque municipale, Versailles, hitherto unknown to scholarship.

Chapter 11 concerns the reform of opéra-comique. It reconstructs the inner logic of musical processes in comedies that were all written in reaction to Italian intermezzi. ‘Hybrid Popular Operas’ discusses the first French adaptations of intermezzi: in no case was there a simple process of translation. Pierre Baurans conceived a new genre, comédie mêlée d’ariettes. These adaptations of La serva padrona and Il maestro di musica added new music, and spoken dialogue in verse. C.-S. Favart developed this approach in La Bohémienne and Ninette à la cour, creating dialogued ensembles from solo-voice originals. Rousseau’s Le Devin du village, albeit a court work, innovated through its melodic style, its unconventional forms and its stage directions that were connected to popular practice. Les Troqueurs by Vadé and Dauvergne is then compared and contrasted with Le Devin du village. Egidio Duni’s final opera for Italy, Le Retour au village, is compared with his first for Paris, Le Peintre amoureux de son modèle: their melodic style demonstrably followed Rousseau’s example. Élie Fréron’s published review of Le Peintre amoureux proves that it was understood as a sophisticated exploration of comedic approaches. Using music, aspects of multivocality, orchestration, envoiced memory and stage co-ordination broke new ground.

Chapter 9 documents the varied dramatic roles given to newly written music in popular opera before the 1750s; it also illustrates exceptional and virtuosic vocal music that was increasingly brought in. An initial overview names fifteen Fair theatre composers, including Elisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre, then documents musical commissions made during the first period (1714 to 1718) such as cantatas and set pieces. Louis de Lacoste’s musical depiction of the Prince’s mental disturbance in La Princesse de Carizme is explained. ‘Corrette and Modern Dance’ turns to innovations in the 1730s, the era of enthusiasm for dance. Corrette’s ‘concertos comiques’, Italian in inspiration, were sometimes linked structurally with specific opéras-comiques, whether through dance sequences or musical connections with recurring vaudevilles. ‘Beyond vaudevilles’ focuses on the continually expanding range of borrowed music. ‘Showpiece’ vaudevilles requiring vocal dexterity are compared and quoted, their origins in recent dances by Mouret, Blamont, Rebel and Francœur; but Favart also made vocal pieces from keyboard music by Couperin and an instrumental menuet by Derochet, whose lengths exceeded 100 bars. In Les Nymphes de Diane Favart treated vaudevilles as a heterogeneous musical collage; this mock-pastoral incorporated quasi-operatic group scenes.