Opera Buffa Essay

The term opera seria refers to the noble and ‘serious’ style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from 1710- 1770 however this term was rarely used during this time and only really attained common usage when it was becoming unfashionable. The phrase opera buffa was first used as an informal description of the Italian comic operas which were especially associated with developments in Naples during the first half of the eighteenth century. The development of the opera buffa was parallel with the development of opera seria and arose in response to the reforms of Zeno and Metastasio: comic characters had been part of opera until the early eighteenth century and comic operas appeared in the form of ‘intermezzi’ which were short one act interludes
performed in between acts of opera seria. These developed into fully fledged opera buffa later on in the eighteenth century. An example of an early opera buffa is ‘La Serva Padrona’ by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi which originated as an intermezzo before later being performed as a stand-alone work.
Opera buffa was intended as a genre that the common man more easily relate to; therefore the high flown language popular in the opera seria was generally avoided in favour of dialogue that the lower classes could relate to, often using local dialects.
The opera buffa was made for common people and therefore depicted common people with common problems in comic scenes and situations, as well as deriving stock characters from the commedia dell’arte: ‘the composer often fastened on some pet idiosyncrasy of the character portrayed in all his arias.’(Robinson) Robinson goes on to state that characters in opera seria were ‘never given such a mannerism.’; opera seria was intended as an entertainment for kings and nobility which is reflected in its characters; opera seria often depicted royals, gods and ancient heroes in mythical settings, very different to the contemporary settings of the opera buffa. However, although opera seria was often set in mythical settings, the subject matter covered was serious and comic scenes were sparse in this
genre.
The two genres also varied in the way they were presented: the opera seria would often be a rather lavish production while the set of an opera buffa would be much simpler and performed in only two acts, as opposed to the usual three of opera seria. Opera seria also favoured higher voices using mainly soprano and castrati singers while opera buffa preferred the lower voices of the baritone and basso buffo. The use of patter song was also common in opera buffa.
According to M.F.Robinson ‘Many members of the Italian public would nevertheless have found arias in opera seria more satisfactory to listen to than those in opera buffa because they were better sung.’ The best singers tended to sing opera seria as it was financially more rewarding: Burney, upon a visit to Naples in 1770 complained that the opera buffa performances there were marred by bad singing.
Opera seria was at its peak between 1720 and 1790 but also continued into the early nineteenth century.
Opera buffa only started to become an opera in its own right later on the eighteenth century and its importance diminished during the Romantic period at the start of the nineteenth century. During its peak, the musical style of opera seria followed a fairly unified, although constantly developing, course. This is mainly due to the influence of the Neapolitan school of composers as a majority of famous Italian composers, such as Leonardo Vinci, were educated there and also down to the desire of composers to maintain popularity by writing in the modern fashion. Early opera seria was dominated by the influence of Metastasio who wrote many librettos drawing on dramas featuring classical characters and their conflicts between love, honour and duty using ornate and elegant language: ‘the trend was towards greater diversity of mood and texture between phrase and phrase.’ (Robinson) This style of libretto was customary for Metastasio and his contemporaries during the first half of the eighteenth century. This Metastasian model peaked during the 1750’s however opera began to give way to new trends popularized by Niccolo Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta during the 1740s-60s who favoured ideas from French operatic traditions as opposed to the Italianate pattern of alternating, sharply-contrasted recitative and aria. Jommelli favoured accompanied recitative and a greater dynamic contrast
instead while also giving the orchestra a more prominent role while Traetta reintroduced ballet and re-established the tragic, melodramatic endings of classical dramas. Notably after 1760, Traetta also started to give a larger role to the chorus in his works. One can see a culmination of these reforms when looking at the work of Christoph Willibald Gluck: beginning with ‘Orfeo ed Euridice’ and continuing later with ‘Alceste’ and ‘Paride ad Elena’. He started by cutting back on the possibilities for vocal virtuosity given to singers and abolished the secco recitative therefore reducing the delineation between the aria and recitative. Gluck focused on unifying dance, drama, music and theatrical practice in the synthesis of French and Italian traditions while also paying attention to the orchestration and increasing the role of the chorus. He also cut back heavily on exit arias and abolished the labyrinth subplots of baroque opera. Another work where you can see examples of these reforms is in Jommelli’s opera of 1768 ‘Fetonte’ where the ensemble and chorus are dominant and the usual number of exit arias is halved. Despite this, for the most part these trends didn’t become mainstream until the 1790s: the Metastasian model continued to dominate.
The 1770s welcomed a new wave of composers of opera seria such as the likes of Wolfgang Mozart, Joseph Haydn and Antonio Salieri. This was a result of Gluck’s reforms which made most of the composers of previous decades obsolete. Orchestras grew in size, arias lengthened, ensembles became more prominent and obbligato recitative became common and more elaborate. The arias in opera seria of this decade were all very similar: fast ‘allegro’ arias were the fashion and the vocalisations were more florid than ever.
The intermezzi, from which the opera buffa originated was first introduced to provide ‘respite to the audience from the sustained high-flown antics of the chief characters’ in the works presented in Naples during the second half of the seventeenth century. One work which can be argued to have greatly contributed to the development of opera buffa as a genre in its own right is Pergolesi’s ‘La Serva Padrona’. It was first performed on the 28th August 1733 in between acts of ‘Il Prigioniero Superbo’ as the first ‘intermezzo buffo’ and was received with great enthusiasm. Ruggero Vené pinpoints its success down to the superior quality of the music, not the text itself: ‘In it the young maestro revealed his magnificent artistic talent, overcoming the difficulties inherent in being allowed but two characters on the stage and in having orchestra limited to a quartet, difficulties that would have snared a lesser talent into deadly monotony.’ (Vené) As a result of Pergolesi, opera buffa developed with ‘rapid strides’ (Vené) with many popular works coming from Naples from the likes of Porpora, Sacchini and Anfossi. As the opera buffa developed into the second half of the eighteenth century it began to be recognised as a serious art form, in contrast to the previous sentiments of European intellectuals who, according to Stanley Sadie, regarded it as: "an inferior art form, began to reappraise their attitude, and a number of them came to admire it for its vivacity, expressiveness, and naturalness, in the sense that it dealt with real human emotions as opposed to the lofty, artificially contrived ones found in opera seria."(Sadie) However opera buffa ‘died away with the century that saw its birth.’(Vené) as its significance lessened during the Romantic period.