Opera buffa
Encyclopedia
Opera buffa is a genre of opera
. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic opera
s variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc. It is especially associated with developments in Naples
in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy. It was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter
.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
considers La Cilla (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by F. A. Tullio, 1706) and Luigi
and Federico Ricci
's Crispino e la comare
(1850) to be the first and last sightings of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example Krenek's Zeitoper
Schwergewicht
). Summits in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo, Loran Glodici, Sogol Cardoni and various other approximate anagram
s of Carlo Goldoni
, the three Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies of Gioachino Rossini.
Similar foreign genres such as opéra comique
or Singspiel
differed as well in having spoken dialogue in place of recitativo secco, although one of the most influential examples, Pergolesi
's La serva padrona
, sparked the Querelle des bouffons in Paris as an adaptation without sung recitatives.
and arose in reaction to the so-called first reform of Zeno
and Metastasio
. It was, in part, intended as a genre that the common man could relate to more easily. Whereas opera seria was a lavish entertainment that was both made for and depicted kings and nobility, opera buffa was made for and depicted common people with more common problems. High-flown language was generally avoided in favor of dialogue that the lower class would relate to, often in the local dialect, and the stock characters were often derived from those of the Italian commedia dell'arte
.
In the early 18th century, comic operas often appeared as short, one-act interludes known as intermezzi
that were performed in between acts of opera seria. These gave way to the full-fledged opera buffa later in the 18th century. La serva padrona
by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
(1710–1736), is the one intermezzo still performed with any regularity today, and provides an excellent example of the style.
Apart from Pergolesi, the first major composers of opera buffa were Nicola Logroscino
, Baldassare Galuppi and Alessandro Scarlatti
, all of them based in Naples or Venice
.
The opera buffa's importance diminished during the Romantic Period. Here, the forms were freer and less extended than in the serious genre and the set numbers were linked by recitativo secco, except in Donizetti's Don Pasquale
in 1843. With Rossini a standard distribution of four characters is reached: a prima donna soubrette (soprano or mezzo); a light, amorous tenor; a basso cantante or baritone capable of lyrical, mostly ironical expression; and a basso buffo whose vocal skills, largely confined to clear articulation and the ability to ‘patter’, must also extend to the baritone for the purposes of comic duets.
The type of comedy could vary, and the range was great: from Rossini's The Barber of Seville
in 1816 which was purely comedic, to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
in 1786 which added drama and pathos. Another example of Romantic opera buffa would be Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore
of 1832.
It is claimed that the last true example of the opera buffa is Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare
in 1850.
s and castrati) for principal characters, often even for monarchs. In contrast, the model that generally held for opera buffa was having two acts (as, for example, The Barber of Seville), dealing with comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices to the exclusion of the castrati
. This led to the creation of the characteristic "basso buffo", a specialist in patter
who was the center of most of the comic action. (A well-known basso buffo role is Leporello in Mozart's
Don Giovanni
).
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
s variously classified by their authors as ‘commedia in musica’, ‘commedia per musica’, ‘dramma bernesco’, ‘dramma comico’, ‘divertimento giocoso' etc. It is especially associated with developments in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy. It was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter
Patter
Patter is a prepared and practiced speech, that is designed to produce a desired response from its audience. Examples of occupations with a patter might include the: auctioneer, salesperson, dance caller, or comedian....
.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
New Grove Dictionary of Opera
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
considers La Cilla (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by F. A. Tullio, 1706) and Luigi
Luigi Ricci
Luigi Ricci , was an Italian composer, particularly of operas.He was the elder brother of Federico Ricci, with whom he collaborated on several works.- Life :...
and Federico Ricci
Federico Ricci
Federico Ricci , was an Italian composer, particularly of operas.Born in Naples, he was the younger brother of Luigi Ricci, with whom he collaborated on several works....
's Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare is an opera by Luigi Ricci and Federico Ricci with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.-Performance history:The premiere took place on 28 February 1850 at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice....
(1850) to be the first and last sightings of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example Krenek's Zeitoper
Zeitoper
Zeitoper was a short-lived genre of opera associated with Weimar Germany. It is not known when or by whom the term was coined, but by 1928 Kurt Weill was able to complain that it was more a slogan than a description...
Schwergewicht
Schwergewicht
Schwergewicht, oder Die Ehre der Nation is a burleske Operette with text and music by Ernst Krenek, his opus 55 and the third of his 1928 one-acters...
). Summits in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo, Loran Glodici, Sogol Cardoni and various other approximate anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
s of Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Goldoni
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
, the three Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies of Gioachino Rossini.
Similar foreign genres such as opéra comique
Opéra comique
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged out of the popular opéra comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent , which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections...
or Singspiel
Singspiel
A Singspiel is a form of German-language music drama, now regarded as a genre of opera...
differed as well in having spoken dialogue in place of recitativo secco, although one of the most influential examples, Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
's La serva padrona
La serva padrona
La serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera...
, sparked the Querelle des bouffons in Paris as an adaptation without sung recitatives.
History
Comic characters and situations, usually involving servants, had been a part of opera until the early 18th century, when "opera buffa" began to emerge as a separate genre. Opera buffa was a parallel development to opera seriaOpera seria
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...
and arose in reaction to the so-called first reform of Zeno
Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters.-Early life:Apostolo Zeno was born of Cretan Greek descent in Venice in 1669...
and Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...
. It was, in part, intended as a genre that the common man could relate to more easily. Whereas opera seria was a lavish entertainment that was both made for and depicted kings and nobility, opera buffa was made for and depicted common people with more common problems. High-flown language was generally avoided in favor of dialogue that the lower class would relate to, often in the local dialect, and the stock characters were often derived from those of the Italian commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell'arte is a form of theatre characterized by masked "types" which began in Italy in the 16th century, and was responsible for the advent of the actress and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is "comedy of craft"; it is shortened...
.
In the early 18th century, comic operas often appeared as short, one-act interludes known as intermezzi
Intermezzo
In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...
that were performed in between acts of opera seria. These gave way to the full-fledged opera buffa later in the 18th century. La serva padrona
La serva padrona
La serva padrona is an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico, after the play by Jacopo Angello Nelli. The opera is only 45 minutes long and was originally performed as an intermezzo between the acts of a larger serious opera...
by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was an Italian composer, violinist and organist.-Biography:Born at Iesi, Pergolesi studied music there under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725, where he studied under Gaetano Greco and Francesco Feo among others...
(1710–1736), is the one intermezzo still performed with any regularity today, and provides an excellent example of the style.
Apart from Pergolesi, the first major composers of opera buffa were Nicola Logroscino
Nicola Logroscino
Nicola Bonifacio Logroscino was an Italian composer who is best known for his operas.-Biography:He was born at Bitonto and was a pupil of Francesco Durante...
, Baldassare Galuppi and Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti
Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.-Life:Scarlatti was born in...
, all of them based in Naples or Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
.
The opera buffa's importance diminished during the Romantic Period. Here, the forms were freer and less extended than in the serious genre and the set numbers were linked by recitativo secco, except in Donizetti's Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale
Don Pasquale is an opera buffa, or comic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The librettist Giovanni Ruffini wrote the Italian language libretto after Angelo Anelli's libretto for Stefano Pavesi's Ser Marcantonio ....
in 1843. With Rossini a standard distribution of four characters is reached: a prima donna soubrette (soprano or mezzo); a light, amorous tenor; a basso cantante or baritone capable of lyrical, mostly ironical expression; and a basso buffo whose vocal skills, largely confined to clear articulation and the ability to ‘patter’, must also extend to the baritone for the purposes of comic duets.
The type of comedy could vary, and the range was great: from Rossini's The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's comedy Le Barbier de Séville , which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music...
in 1816 which was purely comedic, to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro
Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata , K. 492, is an opera buffa composed in 1786 in four acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro .Although the play by...
in 1786 which added drama and pathos. Another example of Romantic opera buffa would be Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore
L'elisir d'amore is an opera by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. It is a melodramma giocoso in two acts...
of 1832.
It is claimed that the last true example of the opera buffa is Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare
Crispino e la comare is an opera by Luigi Ricci and Federico Ricci with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave.-Performance history:The premiere took place on 28 February 1850 at the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice....
in 1850.
Relation to and differences from opera seria
While opera seria deals with mythical subjects such as gods and ancient heroes and only occasionally contained comic scenes, opera buffa involves the predominant use of comic scenes, characters, and plot lines in a contemporary setting. The traditional model for opera seria had three acts, dealt with serious subjects in mythical settings as stated above and used high voices (both sopranoSoprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
s and castrati) for principal characters, often even for monarchs. In contrast, the model that generally held for opera buffa was having two acts (as, for example, The Barber of Seville), dealing with comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices to the exclusion of the castrati
Castrato
A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
. This led to the creation of the characteristic "basso buffo", a specialist in patter
Patter song
The patter song is characterized by a moderately fast to very fast tempo with a rapid succession of rhythmic patterns in which each syllable of text corresponds to one note...
who was the center of most of the comic action. (A well-known basso buffo role is Leporello in Mozart's
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
).