Opera Buffa

Comic opera that puts servants and citizens on stage, with patter, ensembles and quick orchestral jokes.

Related

ClassicalOpera BuffaOpera SeriaVoice

Opera buffa is the Italian comic opera that emerged in the eighteenth century and put servants, citizens and ordinary households at the centre of the stage.

Origins and dating

In 1730s Naples, Pergolesi's La serva padrona won audiences as an intermezzo. It turned away from the gods and castratos of opera seria and built plots from domestic life. Mozart and Rossini brought the genre to its height by 1800, and Donizetti and Verdi carried it into the nineteenth century.

Listening features

Recitative stays close to speech, while arias often use rapid repeated notes. A buffo bass rattles through syllables, and ensembles let several characters speak at once. The orchestra cuts in with short tuttis, and a closing crescendo seals the joke. Ranges remain modest, tunes are easy to remember, and numbers are clearly separated.

Figures

Pergolesi set the model. Mozart wrote Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte. Rossini wrote Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Donizetti and Verdi extended the tradition.

Lineage

The genre grows from the intermezzo and commedia dell'arte and leads to operetta, musical theatre and twentieth-century comic opera.

Misconceptions

Comic opera is not shapeless farce, since its ensembles and act finales are tightly built. Nor is it without serious content, because Le nozze di Figaro mocks class difference while making us laugh.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Opera buffa — definitions and chronology checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2005) — comic opera context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.