Comédie mêlée d'ariettes

The French term comédie mêlée d'ariettes (French pronunciation: [kɔmedi mɛle daʁjɛt], 'comedy mixed with little songs') was frequently used during the late ancien régime for certain types of opéra comique (French opera with spoken dialogue). The term became popular in the mid 18th century following the Querelle des Bouffons, a dispute over the respective merits of French serious opera and Italian opera buffa. At first it was applied to works which parodied Italian opera buffa, in the sense that the words were changed but not the music. One of the earliest examples is the librettist Charles-Simon Favart's Le caprice amoureux, ou Ninette à la cour (1755), which was a parody of Carlo Goldoni's Bertoldo, Bertoldino e Cacasenno (1748), a pasticcio with music by Vincenzo Ciampi and others (first performed in Paris in 1753 as Bertoldo in corte).