Opéra-comique

Opéra-comique is the French operatic genre defined not by comic content but by form: musical numbers separated by spoken dialogue, cultivated at Paris's Opéra-Comique and its predecessor theatres from the early eighteenth century to the twentieth. Its subjects range across comedy, sentimental drama, rescue plots and tragedy, its music favouring clear melody, romances, couplets and ensemble finales over continuous declamation. *Daniel Auber* and *François-Adrien Boieldieu* established its nineteenth-century ascendancy, and the genre's framework accommodated works as different as *Adolphe Adam*'s "Le postillon de Lonjumeau", *Ambroise Thomas*'s "Mignon" and *Georges Bizet*'s "Carmen".