Opéra comique (plural: opéras comiques) is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent (and to a lesser extent the Comédie-Italienne), which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections. Associated with the Paris theatre of the same name, the Opéra-Comique, opéra comique is not always comic or light in nature — indeed, Carmen, perhaps the most famous opéra comique, is a tragedy.

The term opéra comique is complex in meaning and cannot simply be translated as "comic opera". It originated in the early 18th century when it was applied to humorous and satirical plays performed at the theatres of the Paris fairs which contained songs with new words set to already existing music (vaudevilles). In the middle of the 18th century, composers began to write original music to replace the vaudevilles, under the influence of the lighter types of Italian opera (especially Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona). This form of opéra comique was often known as comédie mêlée d'ariettes, but the range of subject matter it covered expanded far beyond the merely comic. By the 19th century, opéra comique often meant little more than works with spoken dialogue performed at the Opéra-Comique theatre, as opposed to works with recitative which appeared at the Paris Opéra. Thus the most famous of all opéras comiques, Georges Bizet's Carmen, is on a tragic subject. As Elizabeth Bartlet and Richard Langham Smith note in their Grove article on the subject, composers and librettists frequently rejected the use of the umbrella term opéra comique in favour of more precise labels.

Coordinates: 48°52′15″N 2°20′16″E / 48.870962°N 2.337703°E / 48.870962; 2.337703

The Opéra-Comique is a Parisian opera company, which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with, and for a time took the name of its chief rival the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, and was also called the Théâtre-Italien up to about 1793, when it again became most commonly known as the Opéra-Comique. Today the company's official name is Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique, and its theatre, with a capacity of around 1,248 seats, sometimes referred to as the Salle Favart (the third on this site), is located in Place Boïeldieu, in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier, one of the theatres of the Paris Opéra. The musicians and others associated with the Opéra-Comique have made important contributions to operatic history and tradition in France, and to French opera. Its current mission is to reconnect with its history, and discover its unique repertoire, to ensure production and dissemination of operas for the wider public. Mainstays of the repertory at the Opéra-Comique during its history have included the following works which have each been performed more than 1,000 times by the company: Cavalleria Rusticana, Le chalet, La dame blanche, Le domino noir, La fille du régiment, Lakmé, Manon, Mignon, Les noces de Jeannette, Le pré aux clercs, Tosca, La bohème, Werther and Carmen, the last having been performed more than 2,500 times.

Anna Caterina Antonacci, born 5 April 1961 in Ferrara, is an Italian soprano known for roles in the bel canto and Baroque repertories. She possesses a dark, flexible voice that has been put to great use in the Rossini canon, and indeed for many years she performed as a mezzo-soprano. Antonacci studied in Bologna and made her debut as Rosina in 1986 at Arezzo. She was profiled at length by the New York Times in March 2012.

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Clément Philibert Léo Delibes (21 February 1836 – 16 January 1891) was a French composer of ballets, operas, and other works for the stage. His most notable works include ballets Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) as well as the operas Le roi l'a dit (1873) and Lakmé (1883).

Léo Delibes was born in Saint-Germain-du-Val, now part of La Flèche (Sarthe), France, in 1836. His father was a mailman, his mother a talented amateur musician. His grandfather had been an opera singer. He was raised mainly by his mother and uncle following his father's early death. In 1871, at the age of 35, the composer married Léontine Estelle Denain. His brother Michel Delibes migrated to Spain; he was the grandfather of Spanish writer Miguel Delibes.

Starting in 1847, Delibes studied composition at the Paris Conservatoire as a student of Adolphe Adam. A year later he began taking voice lessons, though he would end up a much better organ player than singer. He held positions as a rehearsal accompanist and chorus master at the Théâtre Lyrique, as second chorus master at the Paris Opéra (in 1864), and as organist at Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot (1865–71). The first of his many operettas was Deux sous de charbon, ou Le suicide de Bigorneau ("Two sous-worth of coal"), written in 1856 for the Folies-Nouvelles.

Yvonne Printemps (Ermont, 25 July 1894 – 19 January 1977 in Paris) was a French singer and actress.

Born Yvonne Wigniolle, she made her debut at the age of 12 in a revue at La Cigale in Paris. She was dancing at the Folies Bergère at age 13. Nicknamed Printemps (springtime) by her fellow chorus members because of her sunny disposition, she started in operetta, appearing in such works as Les Contes de Perrault (1913) and Le Poilu (1916). Her voice and stage presence made her a great star at a young age, appearing as a teenager with the greatest stars of the day, Maurice Chevalier and Mistinguett.

In 1919, she married actor-playwright Sacha Guitry. Together they performed in a number of his plays, bringing the extremely popular 1925 production of Mozart to cities in North America, including New York City, Montreal, and Boston, Massachusetts.

In 1934 she received international acclaim for her performance in the Noël Coward play, Conversation Piece. She performed in Paris and at London's West End before going to the United States to star on Broadway. She appeared in nine motion pictures, including the starring role in both the stage and screen versions of Trois Valses.