The incorporation of music into theatrical works initially written without music is an age-old practice. The music may play a purely decorative role or, on the contrary, be used to reinforce the dramaturgy of the play. The quest for a 'total art' in which all the ingredients of the performance contribute to the work has encouraged this approach, and, aside from Molière's comédie-ballets, his other plays have not been exempt from such endeavours.

In 1847, the revival of Dom Juan at the Comédie-Française for the first time since 1665 gave rise to a work halfway between drama and opera. Jacques Offenbach incorporated excerpts from Mozart's dramma giocoso, performed a few years earlier at the Opera, into the original scenes. The staging, greatly influenced by operatic theatre, together with the presence of music, gave the work a deeply romantic dimension. 

In the 20^th century, Jean-Louis Barrault, keen to give the other arts a key role in theatre, sought to use music as a language in its own right. For Amphitryon in 1947, he collaborated with Francis Poulenc on the conception of a music whose characteristics he had himself defined. 

At the Théâtre de l’Athénée and for the Compagnie Renaud-Barrault, Louis Jouvet also called on the composer Henri Sauguet to incorporate musical passages into Dom Juan (1947), Les Fourberies de Scapin (1949) and Tartuffe (1950). According to Sauguet, "Louis Jouvet expected music to help him achieve the perfect harmony of the performance he had created." 

Like his predecessors, Jean Vilar used the power of music, composed this time by Maurice Jarre, to intensify the contrasts of his staging of Dom Juan created for the 7^th Festival d'Avignon (1953), and later performed at the Théâtre National Populaire in the Palais de Chaillot.

Image : Achille Devéria, Costume model for Dom Juan (M. Geffroy) in Dom Juan ou Le festin de pierre, staging by Philoclès Regnier, Paris, Comédie-Française, 1847. © Coll. Comédie-Française