A comic opera. There it is, simply put, opera buffa is a comic opera. That being said, there are some specifics and a history of how Opera Buffa came to be. When thinking about theater and live performance, the classic image of the comedy and tragedy masks often comes to mind. While it may seem like an even split between comedy and tragedy, the origins of Italian opera fall squarely on the side of tragedy.
Many early operas and musical plays told tragic or sacred stories. These performances eventually developed into a codified genre called opera seria more on this genre soon.
While a great tragedy can sweep you away, the composers and performers of seventeenth-century Italy found their courtly audiences enjoyed a bit of silliness mixed in with their star-crossed lovers, interfering gods, and heroic martyrs. Soon audiences wanted more of the comedy to the point where these comedic intermezzi were performed on their own.
It lead inevitably to the political, aesthetic, and musical rejection of Baroque opera seria by progressive philosophers and composers. Chief among the critics of Baroque opera seria was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau lived from to He was an anti-establishment French intellectual. An author, philosopher, and a composer, whatever the topic, Rousseau blasted the establishment. He believed the natural man was born pure, but was corrupted by civilization.
He had a major hand in writing the great French Encyclopedia, a virtual handbook of the Enlightenment, which was assembled between and For this Encyclopedia, Rousseau wrote two articles, which modern readers think of as mutually exclusive.
However, he thought of them as being related. He wrote the article on politics and the article on music. One of the greatest thinkers and authors of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau launched a devastating attack on the aristocratic opera seria of the late Baroque. In attacking opera seria, the most important, substantial, and glamorous musical genre of its time, Rousseau called into question the basic aesthetic assumptions of the Baroque. He attacked the aristocracy, which in France supported Baroque opera.
Rousseau felt that Baroque opera seria plots and characters were as artificial as their complicated music. He suggested that only an operatic genre that portrayed real people in actual life could be relevant to the humanistic spirit of the Enlightenment.
For Rousseau, music equaled politics, social structure, and opera. His critical opposition to the old-fashioned, state-subsidized French opera erupted in in a pamphlet battle. One group wrote a tract and circulated it around to the public. In response, the opposition wrote theirs and circulated it around as well. This pamphlet battle was known as the guerre des buffons, the war of the buffoonists or the war of the comic actors, so-called because its immediate occasion was the presence in Paris of an Italian opera company.
For two seasons the company had enjoyed sensational success in Paris performing new Italian comic operas or, opera buffe. Rousseau was the leader of the pro-Italian faction, and he published an article, among the many published, in which he went so far as to argue that the French language was inherently unsuitable for operatic singing.
Practically every intellectual or would-be intellectual in Paris, took part in the debate; partisans of the Italian opera buffa on one side, and the friends of traditional French and opera seria on the other. Rousseau was the leader of the pro-Italian faction. He published an article, among the many published, in which he went so far as to argue that the French language was inherently unsuitable for operatic singing.
These tracts, pamphlets, and verbal arguments went to wild extremes in their desire to make their points. Rousseau and his friends represented progressive and advanced opinion in Paris. As a result of their campaign, traditional opera seria soon lost favor among French audiences.
Rousseau and his followers embraced a new genre of opera, then emerging from Italy, particularly from the city of Naples, as the artistic solution for opera in the Enlightenment.
Comic characters have appeared in opera since the early 18th century, and they were often short operatic scenes of usually one-act, performed in between acts of the main opera. The first Italian composers who used this genre were Alessandro Scarlatti in and Nicola Logroscino in However, there were later well-known composers such as Verdi who used elements of opera buffa such as when he composed Falstaff in An opera seria could include the occasional comic scenes, but with ancient heroes and gods involved, and consist of three main acts dealing with more serious mythical subjects.
Though there are comic operas in many traditions, including the French opera comique and the German singspiel, the term usually refers only to Italian comic opera of the 18th and 19th centuries.
One of the differences between Italian comic opera and its counterparts in other traditions is that the Italian variety does not include any spoken parts, but only recitativo secco, a type of singing using the rhythms of natural speech and accompanied by minimal instrumentation.
Before opera buffa emerged as a genre in its own right in the 18th century, many opera seria productions included scenes of comic relief, often involving servants.
These developed into intermezzi, one-act comic operas performed between the acts of an opera seria. Intermezzi were often farcical in nature, and included the stock characters of the commedia del'arte.
0コメント