Comédie larmoyante was a genre of French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 of the 18th century. In this type of sentimental comedy, the impending tragedy was resolved at the end, amid reconciliations and floods of tears. Plays of this genre that ended unhappily nevertheless allowed the audience to see that a "moral triumph" had been earned for the suffering heroes and heroines.

Thomas Heywood's

Thomas Heywood

Thomas Heywood was a prominent English playwright, actor, and author whose peak period of activity falls between late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre.-Early years:...

 masterpiece, A Woman kilde with kindnesse (acted 1603; printed 1607), can be considered a forerunner of this genre.

In Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée's

Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée

Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée , French dramatist who blurred the lines between comedy and tragedy with his comédie larmoyante....

 Mélanide, the genre is fully developed. Comedy was no longer to provoke laughter, but tears. The innovation consisted in destroying the sharp distinction then existing between tragedy and comedy in French literature

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

. Indications of this change had been already offered in the work of Marivaux, and La Chaussée's plays led naturally to the domestic drama of Diderot

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....

 and of Sedaine

Michel-Jean Sedaine

Michel-Jean Sedaine was a French dramatist, was born in Paris.- Biography :His father, who was an architect, died when Sedaine was quite young, leaving no fortune, and the boy began life as a mason's labourer...

.

Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Louis-Sébastien Mercier

Louis-Sébastien Mercier was a French dramatist and writer.-Early life and education:He was born in Paris to a humble family: his father was a skilled artisan who polished swords and metal arms. Mercier nevertheless received a decent education.-Literary career:Mercier began his literary career by...

 considered himself a supporter of this genre.

By blurring the distinctions between comedy and tragedy, the comédie larmoyante formed the basis for the subsequent genre known as Drame Bourgeois, the form of realistic comedy heralded by Denis Diderot's

Denis Diderot

Denis Diderot was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder and chief editor of and contributor to the Encyclopédie....

 Le Fils naturel (published 1757, performed 1771).

There are many examples of 'comédie larmoyante' in both French and Italian opera where it gave birth to the genre of opera semiseria

Opera semiseria

Opera semiseria is an Italian genre of opera, popular in the early and middle 19th century.Related to the opera buffa, opera semiseria contains elements of comedy but also of pathos, sometimes with a pastoral setting. It can usually be distinguished from tragic operas or melodramas by the presence...

: André Grétry's Lucile

Lucile (opera)

Lucile is an opéra comique, described as a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, in one act by the Belgian composer André Grétry, The French text was by Jean-François Marmontel, and the characters in the opera, though not the actual story, were derived from Marmontel's L'école des pères...

, Nicolas Dalayrac

Nicolas Dalayrac

Nicolas-Marie d'Alayrac, known as Nicolas Dalayrac , was a French composer, best known for his opéras-comiques.- Biography :...

's Nina, ou La folle par amour

Nina (Dalayrac)

Nina, ou La folle par amour is an opera in one act by the French composer Nicolas Dalayrac. It was first performed at the Comédie-Italienne in Paris on 15 May 1786...

, Pasquale Anfossi

Pasquale Anfossi

Bonifacio Domenico Pasquale Anfossi was an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome....

's La vera costanza

La vera costanza (Anfossi)

La vera costanza , is an operatic dramma giocoso in three acts by Pasquale Anfossi. The comédie larmoyante-influenced Italian libretto was by Francesco Puttini. The opera preceded Joseph Haydn's better known setting of the same libretto by three years.-Performance history:The work was first...

(1776) and Joseph Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

's work of the same name

La vera costanza

La vera costanza , Hob. 28/8, is an operatic dramma giocoso by Joseph Haydn. The Italian libretto was a shortened version of the one by Francesco Puttini set by Pasquale Anfossi for the opera of the same name given in Rome in 1776...

(1779).