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All the comédie-ballets were commissioned by Louis XIV, with the exception of the first play and the very last one, Le Malade imaginaire. Performed at court festivals, the plays brought together the sovereign, performers and courtiers, who were often actors themselves, and created an illusion of a certain 'familiarity' with the King. 

An event that was both aesthetic and political, the court festival was an instrument of power that not only kept the courtiers under control but also gave foreigners "a most advantageous impression of magnificence, power, wealth and grandeur."

Every year, the royal palaces of Versailles, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Chambord and Paris, first in the Louvre and then in the Tuileries, served as a setting for the festivals. The three greatest royal festivals of the years 1660-1670 were the subject of publications subsequently supplemented with engravings by Israel Silvestre, François Chauveau and Jean Lepautre, under the supervision of the Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Their aim was to disseminate the narrative and images widely, and to demonstrate the grandeur of the French monarchy. It was thanks to this initiative that the performances before the King of La Princesse d'Elide (The Princess of Elid), George Dandin, and the Malade Imaginaire were immortalised in prints. 

Other memorable occasions saw the first performance of the Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman) at Chambord in 1670, and of Psyché for the carnival of 1671 at the Tuileries Palace theatre. After Molière's death, his troupe continued to give regular performances of comédie-ballets before the court.

Molière's troupe moved to the Palais-Royal in Paris in 1660, where from 1661, the comédie-ballets created for the King were staged, with music by Lully and ballets by Beauchamps. It was the latter who was responsible for the dance and directed the music, unlike Lully who was paid nothing for the use of his compositions. 

The plays were popular with the public, and takings were excellent. The King's brother, 'Monsieur', and his wife regularly attended. A large part of the audience was made up of aristocrats, alongside the bourgeoisie who filled the stalls. Some plays, whose subjects were too unfamiliar for Parisian audiences, were not performed, or only very rarely, such as La Princesse d'Élide and Les Amants magnifiques (The Magnificent Lovers).

Molière's actors, who could also sing and dance, performed some of the divertissements, like Madeleine Béjart and Catherine de Brie in Le Mariage forcé. In an attempt to approximate the effect produced by the court interludes, additional musicians and dancers were hired and, more rarely, singers, as in Psyché. When this tragédie-ballet was performed for the Parisian public from July 1671, it was the first time that the singers had appeared before the audience with their faces uncovered. 

The success of these performances accompanied by music prompted the actors of the Comédie-Française to decide that twelve musical instruments would accompany all of their performances. The troupe was to maintain a permanent group of musicians and dancers throughout the 18^th century.

In France in the early 1980s, a little over 300 years after the creation of the comédie-ballets, enthusiasm for the authentic reproduction of baroque music using ancient instruments, together with the rediscovery of the dances of the age of Louis XIV, led to increased interest in the faithful recreation of these works in accordance with the criteria of the time. 

Although the music still survives thanks to 17^th century manuscripts, no record remains of the choreographies, which had to be reinvented. These historical reconstructions provide us with some idea of the opulence of Molière's time.

In 1990, the first comédie-ballet staged according to these new criteria by Jean-Marie Villégier was Le Malade imaginaire, with Marc-Antoine Charpentier's music entirely restored under the direction of William Christie (Les Arts Florissants) and a choreography created by Francine Lancelot with the Ris et Danceries Company. 

In 2004, Benjamin Lazar and Vincent Dumestre (Le Poème Harmonique) restaged Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, based on Lully's original music, with the acting style and diction of the time. More recently, in 2017, Vincent Tavernier (Les Malins Plaisirs) directed Les Amants magnifiques with Lully's six interludes conducted by Hervé Niquet (Le Concert Spirituel), and with a highly inventive choreography in baroque style by Marie-Geneviève Massé.

In 2022, the Théâtre Molière Sorbonne, a training workshop for Sorbonne University students, decided to restage Le Malade imaginaire in a carefully documented production, as close as possible to the conditions in which the play was first performed in 1673 and 1674.