Opéra-ballet (
French; plural:
opéras-ballets) was a popular genre of
French Baroque lyric theatre, combining elements of
opera and
ballet, "that grew out of the
ballets à entrées of the early seventeenth century". It differed from the more elevated
tragédie en musique as practised by
Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways. It contained more dance music than the
tragédie, and the plots were not necessarily derived from
classical mythology and allowed for the comic elements, which Lully had excluded from the
tragédie en musique after
Thésée (1675). The
opéra-ballet consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts (also known as
entrées), often loosely grouped around a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known as
actes de ballet.