ABSTRACT
JOHN Gay created ballad opera with The Beggar’s Opera of 1728 by capitalizing on the richness of traditional song in the British Isles, just as Alain Lesage had a few years earlier seized on popular French songs when creating a new kind of satirical comedy—opéra-comique. The French genre had a perilous gestation, but once born it turned out to be a resilient child. 1 Buffeted by royal privileges that granted spoken drama to the Comédie Française, sung drama to the Opéra, and commedia dell’arte to the Théâtre Italien, opéra-comique survived only by paying fees to one or more of the three royal companies. A product of the humble suburban theatres associated with the seasonal trade fairs of Saint Germain and Saint Laurent, opéra-comique was by nature a popular spectacle. Nicholas van Blarenberghe captured the hurly-burly of the winter fair at Saint Germain in a miniature painting of 1763 (illus.1), showing actors enticing the crowd to enter their theatre. Above the door on a platform struts a 78Harlequin, his slapstick protruding behind him, while another player balances in the air.
