Comic Opera
In light of the changing times, it is significant that Italian opera buffa, so popular in the latter third of the 18 th century, was coming to a close during Donizetti's lifetime. Only ten years later, after Don Pasquale, did the genre begin to wane. Verdi's Falstaff and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi , are the only subsequent works that remain in the standard repertoire of the 50 most commonly produced operas. Yet in the top 20 (as evidenced by Opera AMERICA's Cornerstones project), a significant proportion (40%) is devoted to comedy [ Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni (a dramma giocoso, but essentially a light-hearted work), Così fan tutte, The Magic Flute (again with some more austere undertones), The Barber of Seville, La Cenerentola, L'elisir d'amore and Die Fledermaus ]. Four others, Carmen (the Act II quintet), La bohème (Act IV ? just before Musetta's entrance), Turandot (Act II, scene one with Ping , Pang and Pong) and even Madame Butterfly (Act I ? the scene involving Butterfly's drunken uncle) have moments of comic relief. Nevertheless, the dark shadow of Romanticism extended across the 19 th and 20 th centuries, far beyond the artistic trend's usefulness.
Originally comedy and tragedy existed together in a single entity. Baroque opera often featured comic diversions (a contrascena ) within otherwise serious works, typically in pastoral scenes involving characters not associated with the piece's overall plot. The Arcadian revolution, which culminated in the entirely serious early-18 th -century libretti of Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Metastasio, put an end to all of that, and comedy was delegated to the intermezzo, a short interlude sandwiched between acts of an opera seria, or removed altogether. The comic intermezzo was episodic in nature and evolved in part from the improvised spirit of commedia dell'arte (described below). At about the same time, a more naturalistic multi-act comic opera, revealing common people caught up in real situations, began to develop in its own right, traveling north from Naples to Rome . The two offshoots eventually began to merge, and by the middle of the century, were made respectable by the Venetian theaters in part due to the efforts of playwright/librettist Carlo Goldoni. When Austrian emperor Joseph II took the reigns of power in 1780, he made opera buffa the preferred genre in his theaters, which yielded some of the greatest works by Antonio Salieri, Vicente Martín y Soler and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. But when his brother Leopold took over in 1790, it was back to serious opera and buffa took a serious blow.
Yet in Italy , traditional opera buffa continued to flourish, at least for a little while longer. Rossini had several one-act farse to his credit before he mounted The Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola, and Donizetti had even more stacked up before L'elisir d'amore. Vincenzo Bellini never tried his hand at comedy, but Giuseppe Verdi attempted one for his second staged work with disastrous results ? Un giorno di regno was a miserable failure. The gravity of the oncoming age would eclipse the comic spirit in Italy , yet in France , where the Romantic Drama of Victor Hugo had its very beginnings, opéra comique continued to thrive. From its early beginnings as fairground entertainment, later made into vaudevilles by Charles Favart, French comic opera reached its zenith in the countless works of Jacques Offenbach and the many lighter works by Auber (again set to libretti by Scribe). The Opéra-Comique would be named after Favart in its three incarnations (fires were a constant nuisance in those days), but by the latter part of the 19 th century, programming had become a bit more serious as Bizet's Carmen (1875) would testify. By the turn of the century, the Opéra-Comique was on equal footing with the Opéra, evidenced by the lack of spoken dialogue (previously a distinction between the two) in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and its tragic denouement. Puccini's three most famous operas also found their premieres there.
Back in Austria , even though Leopold had virtually pulled the plug on opera buffa, musical comedy continued to flourish in Singspiel. Like opéra comique, Singspiel featured spoken dialogue interspersed with music, but unlike its French counterpart, was more malleable and undefined, a loose agglomeration of elements which dramaturgically didn't always hold together. German comic opera didn't really improve terribly with the influx of Jacques Offenbach, who was instrumental in the development of Viennese operetta. Like opera-comique, both Singspiel and operetta would eventually fade into obscurity, with only The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Magic Flute, Die Fledermaus and The Merry Widow being programmed with any regularity in the present day.
One curious thread recurrent in all of these genres are aspects of the Italian commedia dell'arte. Developed during the middle of the 16 th century, the commedia originated out of makeshift entertainment for the country fairs. Out of this tradition, stock situations became customary: the plight of the cuckolded husband, the old man in pursuit of a young bride, a child indifferent to his or her parents' wishes. Stock characters also became part of the commedia dell'arte, generally in pairs. Thus we have the aged miser Pantalone teamed up with the voracious Il Dottore, the world-wise servant Brighella with his slower-witted colleague Arlecchino, and the two innamorati, the young lovers Lindoro/Lélio/Ottavio with Silvia/Isabella/Rosuara. Throw in a few peripheral characters ? the old gossip La Vecchia, the world-wise maid Colombina/Smeraldina, the scheming Scapino, the stuttering and incompetent Tartaglia, the swaggering army officer Il Capitano ? and a variety of outrageous situations ensue. Specific masks and costuming were used to identify these particular personages (save the lovers, who were always unmasked), and characters were further identified by the dialect of their region of origin [ie. Il Dottore being from Bologna (a university city ), who speaks inappropriate, bastardized Latin, Pantalone/Venetian, the lovers/Tuscan, Brighella and Arlecchino/Bergamask). The dash and sparkle of rapidly spun dialogue also became a hallmark of commedia dell'arte as well as the inclusion of La tirata, an angry tirade delivered by a solo character (Figaro's Act IV aria ?Aprite un po' quegli occhi? in Nozze is one famous example, though Beaumarchais' political overtones were turned by Lorenzo da Ponte into a rage against women). Though names may be changed, the imprint was always recognizable, and certain actors were renowned for their portrayal of specific roles. Those nameless ?extras,? who were chiefly present for general clowning chaos, were branded as ?zanni? (from which the word ?zany? is derived) and their lazzi became standardized and stylized buffoonery, slapstick that involved word play, crude jokes, bodily functions, acrobatics and beating. Music played a part from the very start, often accompanying the busy stage business, and commedia dell'arte easily worked its way into opera buffa as it became more popular, especially in Venice through the works of Goldoni.
Like opera itself, commedia dell'arte was introduced abroad as the Italian nobles families began to marry into the royal house of France and their culture came along with them. It is by this backhand route we see elements of commedia dell'arte in the earliest comedy of the top 20 operas, Il nozze di Figaro. The play is based on a work by French playwright Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais and the plot is loaded with commedia references, from the smart maid Susanne's wily efforts to avoid her employer's advances to the not-as-sharp (but certainly not stupid) Figaro, who attempts to usurp both his boss's authority and the social order. The subplot involves the discovery of a love-child (between ?La Vecchia? Marceline and the hardly medical Dr. Bartholo), identifiable by a unique birthmark (another cliché of the commedia). Add to that the stuttering notary (barely present in the opera as Don Curzio) and the troublemaking music master (drawn from the meddlesome Scapino), and Beaumarchais' play unveils itself as a tailor-made example of the commedia's trickle-down effects.
Of course, Mozart wasn't the first to adapt Beaumarchais' dramas to music. Another composer, Giovanni Paisiello, today nearly forgotten, had adapted the first part of the playwright's trilogy, Le barbier de Séville, just a few years earlier (of course, we know this story better as its remake, Il barbiere di Siviglia, by Gioachino Rossini). Again, we have a similar cast, with a slightly more clever Figaro, the much less-serious and more sprightly Rosina, her young lover counterpart, Almaviva (who poses as ?Lindoro?), the miserly Doctor Bartolo, intent on marrying the young woman and keeping her fortune, and the scheming music master Don Basilio. A sneezing and yawning pair of lazy servants completes the cast.
Save Don Giovanni (which is based on an older Spanish tradition, though one could make a case for the servant Leporello and the old maid Elvira as being akin to the Italian comedy), nearly every comic opera in the top 20 has some sort of commedia ancestry. Elisir 's Dr. Dulcamara is a classic case in point, obligated with a buffo patter aria, ?Udite?? (also extant in Rossini's Barbiere as Dr. Bartolo's ?A un dottor della mia sorte? ), as well as two young lovers, though one is obviously conflicted over the direction of her affections. Belcore completes the cast as a slight variant of Il Capitano. Così fan tutte has the acid-tongued, world-wise maid, so common to opera buffa, derived from Colombina and her sisters. The tradition of masks and disguises also bears some commedia traces, as we see in Despina's two oft-used disguises, first as doctor and then as notary (classic commedia characters typically ripe for deflation). We also observe these characteristics in the much later work, Die Fledermaus, itself derived from a French play, Le réveillon. Again, we find a spirited young maid with high ambitions, as well as a stuttering, ineffective lawyer, a conniving central figure and a pompous, cuckolded husband, though in this case he is equally as guilty for his indiscretions. Again, masquerade plays an important role. La Cenerentola also betrays some commedia tendencies in its blustering buffoon Don Magnifico (again derived from the pomposity of the Pantalone figure, intent on keeping Angiolina's fortune in the family), sputtering out not one but two patter arias. Also present is the predictably cunning servant Dandini, who gets to play master for a day. And again we find the young lovers defying all obstacles in their effort to unite.
Character names also betray commedia origins. Though stock character names are sometimes used ( Barbiere 's ?Lindoro,? for example), others are derivations with understood significance. Despina, for example, evolves from a tradition of like-maids, such as Serpetta or Vespina, etymologically linked to ?little snake or serpent.? Elisir has similar undertones ? the diminutive Nemorino being ?a little nothing,? the quickly rebounding Belcore quite literally of ?good heart? and Giannetta, as leader of a pack of husband-hunting village girls, stemming from the Italian word for the skin of a wild cat. Dulcamara is a climbing plant that overtakes others and is also a form of nightshade, both a therapeutic and deadly drug. Similarly, the original French play has telling appellations, betraying its Italian origin in the hybrid name of Dulcamara's French counterpart, Fontanarose, literally ?rose fountain,? highly appropriate for one who prescribes medicinal liquids of a dubious nature.
The commedia dell'arte survived into the 20 th century, enjoying a brief a renaissance. As early as 1892, Ruggero Leoncavallo incorporated commedia characters [Pagliaccio (Pedrolino ? the lowest of the named zanni, a dreamer and the prototype of the present day clown), Colombina, Taddeo and Arlecchino] into his otherwise tragic play-within-a play. Giacomo Puccini and Federico Busoni's Turandot resurrected 18 th -century playwright Carlo Gozzi's comic quartet (minus one) by including Pantalone, Tartaglia and Truffaldino (becoming Ping, Pang and Pong in Puccini's later version). Busoni also wrote an opera entitled Arlecchino ? in this instance a case of double infidelity, with the title character running off with the tailor's wife while Colombina cozies up with a nobleman. Likewise, Richard Strauss featured four commedia figures (Harlequin, Scaramuccio, Truffaldino and Brighella) in his Ariadne auf Naxos , the subplot led by the Colombina-inspired Zerbinetta. We begin to see commedia characters shaded by slightly more serious circumstances (indicative perhaps of the overall mood in war-torn Europe) evidenced by Pierrot Lunaire and the Pulchinella ballet by Stravinsky, or Scaramouche by Darius Milhaud (Pierrot is a French derivative of Pedrolino; Pulchinella and Scaramuccio are other named zanni, servants like Arlecchino and Brighella, with their own distinctive qualities). Sergei Prokofiev retained Tartaglia (as the Prince), Pantalone, Truffaldino, Smeraldina and Leander in his adaptation of Gozzi's The Love for the Three Oranges . But comedy couldn't make a lasting recovery in the standard repertoire. Even in the aforementioned works, there is troubling air of pessimism and satire, indicative of the turbulent nature of the 20 th century's first half. Though Britten's Albert Herring (1947) may have been indicative of a changing future, time will tell if newer compositions will have a lasting impact.
Courtesy of Minnesota Opera
