Opera, comic, this entertainment opened in Paris during the fairs of St. Laurent and St. Germain. One may fix the epoch of the opéra comique in 1678, and, in fact, that year the troupe of Alard & Maurice came to perform a comic divertissement in three acts entitled les forces de l'amour & de la magie [ The Forces of Love and Magic ]. It was a bizarre combination of rough humor, bad dialogue, perilous faults, machines and dances.

It was not until 1715 that the comédiens forains [comedians of the fairs], having negotiated with the syndics and directors of the académie royale de musique, gave their entertainment the name opéra comique . The ordinary pieces of this opera were amusing subjects set as vaudevilles, mingled with prose, and accompanied with dances and ballets. They also performed parodies of works that were performed on the stages of the comédie françoise & the académie de musique. M. le Sage is one of the authors that furnished the opéra comique with a great number of pieces, and one might say, in a sense, that he was the founder of this entertainment because of the crowds that he attracted to it.

The comédiens françois [actors of the Comédie-Française] seeing with displeasure that the public was abandoning their theater to run to that of the fair, made their complaints heard and claimed their exclusive rights. They obtained that the comédiens forains could not present ordinary performances. These actors thus being reduced to not being able to speak had recourse to the use of placards on which the prose was written which the actors could not speak. In place of this solution, a better was substituted which was to write couplets on well-known airs that the orchestra would play, and paid people, mingled among the audience, would sing and often the public would accompany them in chorus. At the solicitation of the comédiens françois, all of this was suppressed.

The comédiens italiens [Italian actors] who, since their return to Paris in 1716, were making mediocre receipts, decided in 1721 to leave the theater of the Hôtel de Bourgogne for a time and to open a new theater at the fair. They performed there three consecutive years only during the fair, but as fortune did not favor them in this new establishment, they abandoned it.

The opéra comique reappeared in 1724, but in 1745 this entertainment was entirely abolished. At the fair only mute scenes and pantomimes were performed.

Finally the sieur Monet obtained permission to reestablish this entertainment at the fair of St. Germain in 1752. It was made up simply of a subject chosen to produce comic scenes; rather unrefined performances that were the delight of the common people.