Opera parody, however, emerged in dramatic literature at the time of French opera’s creation. Several comedies of the 1670s allude to Pierre Perrin (the poet who held the royal opera privilège before Lully) and his musical collaborator Robert Cambert, to Lully and his librettist Philippe Quinault, to opera singers and opera mania in Paris, to Lully's draconian restrictions on theatre music, and to performances at Académie Royale de Musique. At the time of the formation of the Comédie-Française in 1680 appeared the first French play to borrow music from Lully's recent operas.
Two early comedies by the prolific playwright and actor Florent Carton
Dancourt (1661-1725) made significant use of parody. Whereas Angélique
et Médor (1685) referred to several earlier operas (Cadmus,
Atys, Alceste, Amadis, Roland), Dancourt's Renaud et Armide
(1686) targeted Lully's latest opera, Armide. In these parodies
the author extracted music, lyrics, and dramatic situations from the operas
and placed them in a burlesque context that completely altered their original
effect. Unlike those of the Italian actors, the parodies of Dancourt
were performed during Lully's lifetime at the time of the premières
of his operas. Along with tantalizing glimpses at the opera scene
in Paris, they offer new insight into the 17th-century practices of opera
parody.
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