The cultural scene of the 1920s was infused by a spirit—part relief, part jubilation—in which entertainment could be enjoyed guilt free, unfettered by the sobriety, austerity, and destruction that had attended the recent Great War. Dance and theater enjoyed a creative explosion, and composers of every musical persuasion participated, producing perhaps more incidental and theater music and ballet scores than at any other time since; scarcely any composer of note escaped the decade without having produced his or her share of such works.

Ibert's Divertissement is drawn from the incidental score the composer produced for the farcical nineteenth century Labiche play The Italian Straw Hat. Labiche's comedy, a classic of its type, recounts the adventures of a nervous bridegroom on his wedding day as he attempts to save a woman's honor by searching for a replacement for a hat he inadvertently ruined, all the while concealing his frantic mission from his intended bride, her suspicious father, and the entire wedding party. Along the way, disguises, unlikely deceptions, misunderstandings, and mistaken identities propel the action to ever greater frenzy before a tidy resolution.

The confluence of periods in the Divertissement—a genre with roots in the Baroque applied to a nineteenth century comedy by a twentieth century composer—is reflected in the parodistic pastiche that informs the work's six sections. In addition to Ibert's "own" music, references to other styles, both sly and blatant, abound. By the end, the astute listener has made his way through a thicket strewn with blues and jazz, music hall tunes, spiky modernist dissonance, Viennese waltzes, and the Wedding March from Mendelssohn's music for A Midsummer Night's Dream.

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