Moresca or Mauresque (French) is a 15th/16th century pantomime dance in which the executants wore Moorish costumes. One such is the concluding music of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo. One of the best examples of the Moresca can be seen in Franco Zeffirelli

Franco Zeffirelli

Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....

's 1968 production of Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)

Romeo and Juliet is a 1968 British-Italian cinematic adaptation of the William Shakespeare play of the same name.The film was directed and co-written by Franco Zeffirelli, and stars Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. It won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design; it was also...

, which has a scene with Moresca characters and lavish, florid portrayal of the dance in the Capulet home.

The term moresca (Italian: moorish song) is also used for an unrelated form of villanella

Villanella

In music, a villanella is a form of light Italian secular vocal music which originated in Italy just before the middle of the 16th century...

, an art song for 3 voices, found in Italy c.1550-1600, see; moresche

Moresche

Moresche is the plural of moresca, meaning Moorish thing, or Moorish girl in Italian. Both the singular and plural can refer to both a 15th~16th Century dance genre or to a 15th~16th Century song genre. This article concerns the genre of moresche, polyphonic "moorish" songs. For the dance, see...

.