Comédie-ballet

Comédie-ballet is the French Baroque stage form, created at the court of Louis XIV, that fuses spoken comedy with sung and danced intermedi: plays by *Molière* are interrupted at the ends of acts by self-contained musical episodes of song, chorus and ballet. *Jean-Baptiste Lully* supplied the music for the mature examples, from "Le Mariage forcé" (1664) to "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" (1670), and *Marc-Antoine Charpentier* for "Le Malade imaginaire" (1673). An orchestra of strings, winds and continuo supports ceremonial dances, character dances and vocal airs within the spoken theatrical frame.