Comic opera
From Open Encyclopedia
| Music of Italy | |
|---|---|
| History (Timeline and Samples) | |
| Genres: | Classical music - Opera |
| Regional styles | |
| Calabria - Campania - Friuli - Liguria - Lombardy - Naples - Piedmont - Puglia - Rome - Sardinia - Sicily - Tuscany - Veneto | |
The term comic opera causes inevitable confusion when it comes to definitions. The term is a translation of the Italian opera buffa. As properly used by musical historians, "comic opera" refers specifically to the light-hearted musical plays that began to be offered as an alternative to weightier opera seria (17th-century opera based on classical mythology) in Naples around the year 1700. The first comic opera of note was il Trionfo dell'onore by Alessandro Scarlatti from 1718. Early comic opera was often in Neapolitan dialect but became "Italianized" during the century in the works of Pergolesi (la serva padrona), Piccinni (la Cecchina), Cimarosa [il matrimonio secreto) and then to the great comic operas of Mozart and, later, Rossini.
The early comic operas were generally presented as intermezzos between acts of more serious works. Yet, the Neapolitan and then the Italian comic opera grew into an independent form and turned out to be the most popular form of staged entertainment in Italy from about 1750 to 1800. In 1749, some 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 on a text by the great Venetian playwright, Carlo Goldoni. That text was based on a very popular English novel, Pamela or Virtue Rewarded, from 1740, by Samuel Richardson. Many years later, Verdi, himself, called la Cecchina, the "first true Italian comic opera"—that is to say, it had everything: it was in Italian and not a 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 about it because the music was by a southern Italian and the text by a northerner, which fact appealed to Verdi's pan-Italian vision.
Care should be taken to avoid confusing the term "comic opera" with deceptively similar looking terms such as the French opera comique. That French term does NOT define the content as serious or light-hearted, but rather is a definition of form; that is, opera comique simply means, in French, a production that employs both singing and speaking (as opposed to being only sung, such as traditional Italian opera, or only spoken—such as a play. Bizet's very serious Carmen is opera comique, for example.
Further confusion can be avoided by using narrow definitions to specify genre. That is, Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein is an example of American musical comedy or, simply, a musical; The Mikado by Gilbert and Sullivan is an example of English operetta; die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II is an example of Viennese operetta; Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert is an example of American operetta, and so forth.
Admittedly, some works defy easy classification—The Magic Flute by Mozart and Porgy and Bess by Gershwin, for example. Classifications seem to multiply, as well, and we now hear terms such as rock opera, folk opera, and, recently in Italy, Italian musical (retaining the English word "musical" in Italian to define contemporary jazz or rock-based musical content). A fair case can made that all of this somehow goes back to the early attempts in 1700 to put some light-hearted musical drama on the stage; yet, all of these forms have taken on lives of their own, so to speak, such that none of it should be called comic opera in the historic use of the term. The proliferation of terms is unfortunate, in one way, but perhaps useful in that it helps to keep the by-now separate varieties of lighter musical drama straight.zh:喜歌剧
