Jacques Ibert's Divertissement is a six-movement suite for chamber orchestra adapted by the composer in 1930 from incidental music he had written for a production of Eugène Labiche's stage comedy The Italian Straw Hat in 1929. It is among Ibert's best-known works and has been recorded many times.
In the decade after the First World War, Jacques Ibert established himself as a leading French composer, winning France's top musical prize, the and becoming known to a large public for compositions such as (a symphonic poem based on Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol) and (Ports of Call, an orchestral representation of a Mediterranean sea voyage). In 1929 he composed incidental music for a revival of Eugène Labiche's 1851 stage comedy (The Italian Straw Hat) at the . The following year he arranged the score into a six-movement divertissement for small orchestra. The premiere was given at the by the on 30 November 1930, conducted by Vladimir Golschmann.
The music critic of wrote after the premiere:
The suite is scored for flute (doubling piccolo), clarinet, bassoon (doubling contrabassoon), French horn, trumpet, trombone, timpani, snare drum, wood block, cymbals, bass drum, tambourine, tam-tam, whistle, piano (doubling celesta) and strings. The home key of all six movements is C major.
Ibert was a friend of two of the members of â Darius Milhaud and Arthur Honegger, but his music generally had little in common with theirs or that of their fellow group members. The musical scholar Roger Nichols writes that in Divertissement, Ibert comes closer than usual to their style:
The composer Michael Ippolito comments that in between the frivolity Ibert offers "a delicately crafted Nocturne that seduces us with atmosphere and sonority, showing an incredible ear for orchestral colour, especially considering the small ensemble".
According to the conductor Richard Auldon Clark, Divertissement is "undoubtedly Ibert's best-known composition", and it has received many recordings.