Comédie-Italienne, La

Comédie-Italienne, La, Paris, name given in 1680 on the formation of the Comédie-Française to the Italian commedia dell'arte actors who then took over the Hôtel de Bourgogne. They had used the theatre ever since Ganassa's first visit in 1570–1 and now settled in to play every day except Friday. In the company were Tiberio Fiorillo, Domenico Biancolelli and his two daughters, and Angelo Constantini, known as Mezzetin. For some years before 1680 the company had been interpolating French songs and phrases, and even whole scenes, into their Italian texts, and Biancolelli persuaded Louis XIV to allow the Italians the free use of the French language. This soon led to the acting of some plays entirely in French, and contemporary dramatists such as Regnard, took advantage of this new outlet. The acting, however, continued to be purely that of the commedia dell'arte, and even in French plays the actors figured under their own names and were allowed ample scope for improvisation. After several warnings they were expelled from France in 1697 because, it was said, they had offended Mme de Maintenon by playing Lenoble's La Fausse Prude, which the audience took delight in applying to her. After Louis XIV's death in 1716 they returned under the leadership of the younger Riccoboni, and again settled in the refurbished Hôtel de Bourgogne. They now used only French on stage and found that the younger dramatists were ready to write for them. They appeared in, among others, many of the finest plays of Marivaux, no longer playing in the commedia dell'arte style but in a new and specialized manner in which foreign and native material were blended. In 1723, on the death of the Regent, they were given the title comédiens ordinaires du roi, with a yearly grant from public funds which is still paid to their successors. From this time they were Italian in name only, their productions ranging from true comedy to ballet-pantomime and the newly fashionable vaudevilles. French actors finally ousted the Italians, of whom the last was Carlin Bertinazzi. In 1752 the Comédie-Italienne ventured into opera buffa, with such success that they were able to absorb their rivals, though at the expense of their former repertory and individuality. In 1783 they left the Hôtel de Bourgogne and opened a fine new theatre called after them on the boulevard des Italiens. The success in 1789 of a rival theatre (known under the Revolution as the Théâtre Feydeau, while the Italians called themselves the Théâtre Favart) nearly ruined them, but in 1801 the two groups amalgamated as the Opéra-Comique, the name given to their present theatre, built in 1835 after the destruction of the old one by fire.