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Idomeneo, Re Di Creta Ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian For Idomeneo

This document provides background information on two genres of 18th century Italian opera: opera seria and opera buffa. Opera seria refers to the "noble and serious" style that was popular from 1710-1770, typically featuring mythological or historical subjects set to Italian librettos. Popular composers included Handel and Mozart. Opera buffa refers to comic opera, originating in Naples in the early 1700s featuring everyday settings, dialects, and simple singing. High points included works by Mozart, Rossini, and Pergolesi's intermezzo La serva padrona.

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70 views2 pages

Idomeneo, Re Di Creta Ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian For Idomeneo

This document provides background information on two genres of 18th century Italian opera: opera seria and opera buffa. Opera seria refers to the "noble and serious" style that was popular from 1710-1770, typically featuring mythological or historical subjects set to Italian librettos. Popular composers included Handel and Mozart. Opera buffa refers to comic opera, originating in Naples in the early 1700s featuring everyday settings, dialects, and simple singing. High points included works by Mozart, Rossini, and Pergolesi's intermezzo La serva padrona.

Uploaded by

Paula
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante (Italian for Idomeneo,[1] King of Crete, or, Ilia and

Idamante; usually referred to simply as Idomeneo, K. 366) is an Italian language opera


seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a
French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by Andr Campra as Idomne in
1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a
court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it might have been Mozart

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Le nozze di Figaro
Opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, is an opera buffa in four acts composed in 1786 by
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at
the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786.Wikipedia

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Written: 1786
Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Language: Italian
First performance: May 1, 1786
Arias: Se vuol ballare
Characters: Cherubin, Doctor Bartolo, Count Almaviva, Marceline,

The Marriage of Figaro continues the plot of The Barber of Seville several years later, and
recounts a single "day of madness" (la folle journe) in the palace of Count Almaviva
near Seville, Spain. Rosina is now the Countess; Dr. Bartolo is seeking revenge against Figaro
for thwarting his plans to marry Rosina himself; and Count Almaviva has degenerated from the
romantic youth of Barber into a scheming, bullying, skirt-chasing baritone. Having gratefully
given Figaro a job as head of his servant-staff, he is now persistently trying to obtain the favors
of Figaro's bride-to-be, Susanna. He keeps finding excuses to delay the civil part of the wedding
of his two servants, which is arranged for this very day. Figaro, Susanna, and the Countess
conspire to embarrass the Count and expose his scheming. He responds by trying to compel
Figaro legally to marry a woman old enough to be his mother, but it turns out at the last minute
that she really is his mother. Through Figaro's and Susanna's clever manipulations, the Count's
love for his Countess is finally restored.

Opera seria (plural: opere serie; usually called dramma per musica or melodramma serio) is an
Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that
predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time
and only attained common usage once opera seria was becoming unfashionable and beginning
to be viewed as a historical genre. The popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic'
opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte.
Italian opera seria (invariably to Italian libretti) was produced not only in Italy but also
in Spain, Habsburg Austria, England,Saxony, German states, and other countries. Opera
seria was less popular in France, where the national genre of French opera was preferred.
Popular composers of opera seria included Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Adolf Hasse, Leonardo
Vinci,Nicola Porpora, George Frideric Handel, and in the second half of the 18th
century Tommaso Traetta, Josef Mysliveek,Gluck, and Mozart.

Opera buffa (Italian, plural: opere buffe; English: comic opera) is a genre of opera. It was first used as an
informal description of Italian comic operas 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.
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera considers La Cilla (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by F. A.
Tullio, 1706) and Luigiand 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'sZeitoper Schwergewicht). High points in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo,
Loran Glodici, Sogol Cardoni [1]and various other approximate anagrams of Carlo Goldoni, the
three Mozart Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies ofGioachino Rossini.
Similar foreign genres such as opra comique or Singspieldiffered as well in having spoken dialogue in
place of recitativosecco, 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 recitatives.

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