Opera buffa

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Not to be confused with Opéra bouffe.
L'elisir d'amore, 1832 opera buffa

Opera buffa (Italian: [ˈɔːpera ˈbuffa], "comic opera"; pl.: opere buffe) is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as commedia in musica, commedia per musica, dramma bernesco, dramma comico, divertimento giocoso.

Especially associated with developments in

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 Francesco Antonio Tullio [it], 1706) and Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare (1850) to be the first and last appearances of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example Ernst Krenek's Zeitoper Schwergewicht). High points in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo, Loran Glodici, Sogol Cardoni[1] and various other approximate anagrams of Carlo Goldoni, the three Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies of Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti.

Similar foreign genres such as French

querelle des bouffons in Paris as an adaptation without sung recitatives
.

Opéra bouffon

opéras comiques having Italianate or near-farcical plots.[2]

The term was also later used by

Orphée aux enfers, Le pont des soupirs, Geneviève de Brabant, Le roman comique [fr] and Le voyage de MM. Dunanan père et fils[3]), and is sometimes confused with the French opéra comique and opéra bouffe.[4]

History

Alessandro Scarlatti, one of the first major composers of opera buffa

Comic characters had been a part of opera until the early 18th century, when opera buffa began to emerge as a separate genre, an early precursor having been the operatic comedy, Il Trespolo tutore, by Alessandro Stradella, in 1679. Opera buffa was a parallel development to opera seria, and arose in reaction to the so-called first reform of Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Metastasio.[1] It was, in part, intended as a genre that the common man could relate to more easily. Whereas opera seria was an 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. The 1701 scherzo drammatico (dramatic jest), Il mondo abbattuto by Nicola Sabini was particularly influential in Naples, creating a popular model due to its use of both Tuscan and Neapolitan dialects.[5]

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. There also existed, however, self-contained operatic comedies. La serva padrona (1733) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), is the one intermezzo still performed with any regularity today, and provides an excellent example of the style. Lo frate 'nnamorato (1732) and Il Flaminio (1735), by Pergolesi as well, are examples of the three-act commedia per musica.[6]

Apart from Pergolesi, the first major composers of opera buffa were Alessandro Scarlatti (Il trionfo dell'onore, 1718), Nicola Logroscino (Il governatore, 1747) and Baldassare Galuppi (Il filosofo di campagna, 1754), all of them based in Naples or Venice. The work of these was then resumed and expanded by Niccolò Piccinni (La Cecchina, 1760), Giovanni Paisiello (Nina, 1789) and Domenico Cimarosa (Il matrimonio segreto, 1792). The genre declined in the mid-19th century, despite Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff staged in 1893.

The importance of opera buffa 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, the exception being 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.[7]

The type of comedy could vary, and the range was great: from

Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in 1786 which added drama and pathos. Another example of Romantic opera buffa would be Donizetti's The Elixir of Love
of 1832.

Relation to and differences from opera seria

While

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), presenting comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices to the exclusion of the

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
.)

References

  1. ^ a b Patrick J. Smith: The Tenth Muse (Schirmer 1970) p. 103.
  2. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0
    .
  3. ^ Le voyage de MM. Dunanan père et fils (Offenbach): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
  4. ^ Notably André-Guillaume Contant d'Orville (Histoire de l'opéra bouffon, Amsterdam, 1768, Vol. I and Vol. II) used the term as a synonym for opéra comique (Bartlet 2001).
  5. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0
    .
  6. ^ Both operas by Pergolesi were originally styled a commedia per musica by their own librettos (to be precise, commeddeja pe mmuseca in Neapolitan as regards the former): cf Lo frate ’nnamorato, 1732 and Il Flaminio, 1735.
  7. ^ Fisher, Burton D. The Barber of Seville (Opera Classics Library Series). Grand Rapids: Opera Journeys, 2005.
  8. ISBN 0-19-869164-5[page needed
    ]

Further reading

  • Eisen, Cliff, et al. "Mozart" in Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online sections 7–10. (subscription required)
  • Grout, Donald, A Short History of Opera. New York, Columbia University Press, 1965.
  • Hunter, Mary (1999), The Culture of opera buffa in Mozart's Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey 1999. (reviewed in: Stevens, Jane R. "Shifting Focus to Mozart's Operas". Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 35, no. 1 (Fall 2001) pp. 160–162.)
  • Opera buffa. World Book Online Reference Center. 2008.
  • Parker, Roger, The Oxford illustrated History of Opera
  • Platoff, John (1992). "How Original Was Mozart? Evidence from "Opera Buffa"." Early Music: vol. 20, no. 1. Oxford University Press, February 1992. pp. 105–117.
  • ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0
    .
  • Webster, James; Hunter, Mary (1997). Opera Buffa in Mozart's Vienna. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England 1997. (reviewed in: Baker, Nicole. "Untitled". Notes, second series, vol. 56, no. 1 (September 1999) pp. 138–140.)
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