The eighteenth-century European novel came out as the modern genre par excellence, both in its articulation of new values like sentiment and experience, and in its problematisation of the individual’s integration in society. It therefore appealed to the librettists of the opéra-comique in France and of the Singspiel in Germany. They contributed to the popularity of the new genre by adapting for the operatic stage the successful novels that were to form the literary canon. The present study confronts the rewriting of two Enlightenment novels, Fielding’s Tom Jones and Wieland’s Don Sylvio von Rosalva, respectively adapted by Poinsinet in 1765 and Bürde in 1795, at two key-moments in the discussion on the evolution and definition of the opéra-comique. The comparison of two libretti based on prose dialogue and musical numbers is conditioned by two parameters : the selection and rewriting of the novel’s episodes and the balance between comedy and sentiment according to the aesthetic requirements of the time, i.e. « to please » and « to move ».
