Comic Opera - Italian Comic Opera

Italian Comic Opera

In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted musical plays began to be offered as an alternative to weightier opera seria (17th-century Italian opera based on classical mythology). Il Trespolo tutore (1679) by Alessandro Stradella (1639–1682) was an early precursor of opera buffa. The opera has a farcical plot, and the characters of the ridiculous guardian Trespolo and the maid Despina are prototypes of characters widely used later in the opera buffa genre.

The form began to flourish in Naples with Alessandro Scarlatti's Il trionfo dell'onore (1718). At first written in Neapolitan dialect, these works became "Italianized" with the operas of Scarlatti, Pergolesi (La serva padrona), Piccinni (La Cecchina), Cimarosa (Il matrimonio segreto), and then the great comic operas of Mozart and, later, Rossini.

At first, comic operas were generally presented as intermezzos between acts of more serious works. Neapolitan and then Italian comic opera grew into an independent form and became the most popular form of staged entertainment in Italy from about 1750 to 1800. In 1749, thirteen years after Pergolesi's death, his La serva padrona swept Italy and France, evoking the praise of such French Enlightenment luminaries as Rousseau.

In 1760, Niccolò Piccinni wrote the music to La Cecchina to a text by the great Venetian playwright, Carlo Goldoni. That text was based on Samuel Richardson's popular English novel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740). Many years later, Verdi called La Cecchina the "first true Italian comic opera" – that is to say, it had everything: it was in standard Italian and not in dialect; it was no longer simply an intermezzo, but rather an independent piece; it had a real story that people liked; it had dramatic variety; and, musically, it had strong melodies and even strong supporting orchestral parts, including a strong "stand-alone" overture (i.e., you could even enjoy the overture as an independent orchestral piece). Verdi was also enthusiastic because the music was by a southern Italian and the text by a northerner, which appealed to Verdi's pan-Italian vision.

The genre was developed further in the 19th century by Gioacchino Rossini in his masterpieces such as The Barber of Seville (1816) and La Cenerentola (1817).