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Opera buffa (, "comic opera"; : opere buffe) is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian variously classified by their authors as commedia in musica, commedia per musica, dramma bernesco, dramma comico, divertimento giocoso.
Especially associated with developments in Naples in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy, buffa was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter song.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera considers La Cilla (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by , 1706) and Luigi and Federico Ricci's Crispino e la comare (1850) to be the first and last appearances of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example Ernst Krenek's Zeitoper Schwergewicht). High points in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo, Loran Glodici, Sogol CardoniPatrick J. Smith: The Tenth Muse (Schirmer 1970) p. 103. and various other approximate of Carlo Goldoni, the three Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies of Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti.
Similar foreign genres such as French opéra comique, English ballad opera, Spanish zarzuela or German Singspiel differed as well in having spoken dialogue in place of recitativo secco, although one of the most influential examples, Pergolesi's La serva padrona (which is an intermezzo, not opera buffa), sparked the querelle des bouffons in Paris as an adaptation without sung .
The term was also later used by Jacques Offenbach for five of his ( Orphée aux enfers, Le pont des soupirs, Geneviève de Brabant, and Le voyage de MM. Dunanan père et fils), and is sometimes confused with the French opéra comique and opéra bouffe.Notably André-Guillaume Contant d'Orville ( Histoire de l'opéra bouffon, Amsterdam, 1768, Vol. I and Vol. II) used the term as a synonym for opéra comique .
In the early 18th century, comic operas often appeared as short, one-act interludes known as intermezzo that were performed in between acts of opera seria. There also existed, however, self-contained operatic comedies. La serva padrona (1733) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710–1736), is the one intermezzo still performed with any regularity today, and provides an excellent example of the style. Lo frate 'nnamorato (1732) and Il Flaminio (1735), by Pergolesi as well, are examples of the three-act commedia per musica.Both operas by Pergolesi were originally styled a commedia per musica by their own librettos (to be precise, commeddeja pe mmuseca in Neapolitan as regards the former): cf Lo frate ’nnamorato, 1732 and Il Flaminio, 1735.
Apart from Pergolesi, the first major composers of opera buffa were Alessandro Scarlatti ( Il trionfo dell'onore, 1718), Nicola Logroscino ( Il governatore, 1747) and Baldassare Galuppi ( Il filosofo di campagna, 1754), all of them based in Naples or Venice. The work of these was then resumed and expanded by Niccolò Piccinni ( La Cecchina, 1760), Giovanni Paisiello ( Nina, 1789) and Domenico Cimarosa ( Il matrimonio segreto, 1792). The genre declined in the mid-19th century, despite Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff staged in 1893.
The importance of opera buffa diminished during the Romantic music. Here, the forms were freer and less extended than in the serious genre and the set numbers were linked by recitativo secco, the exception being Donizetti's Don Pasquale in 1843. With Rossini, a standard distribution of four characters is reached: a prima donna soubrette (soprano or mezzo); a light, amorous tenor; a basso cantante or baritone capable of lyrical, mostly ironical expression; and a basso buffo whose vocal skills, largely confined to clear articulation and the ability to "patter", must also extend to the baritone for the purposes of comic duets.Fisher, Burton D. The Barber of Seville (Opera Classics Library Series). Grand Rapids: Opera Journeys, 2005.
The type of comedy could vary, and the range was great: from Rossini's The Barber of Seville in 1816 which was purely comedic, to Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro in 1786 which added drama and pathos. Another example of Romantic opera buffa would be Donizetti's The Elixir of Love of 1832.
In contrast, the model that generally held for opera buffa was having two acts (as, for example, The Barber of Seville), presenting comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices to the exclusion of the castrato.Warrack, John; West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, This led to the creation of the characteristic "basso buffo", a specialist in Patter song who was the center of most of the comic action. (A well-known basso buffo role is Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni.)
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