Comic opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue.
Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria. It quickly made its way to France, where it became opéra comique, and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner.
The influence of Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German singspiel, Viennese operetta, Spanish zarzuela, Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy.
Italian ''opera buffa''
In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted musical plays began to be offered as an alternative to weightier opera seria. Il Trespolo tutore by Alessandro Stradella was an early precursor of opera buffa. The opera has a farcical plot, and the characters of the ridiculous guardian Trespolo and the maid Despina are prototypes of characters widely used later in the opera buffa genre.The form began to flourish in Naples with Alessandro Scarlatti's Il trionfo dell'onore. At first written in Neapolitan dialect, these works became "Italianized" with the operas of Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Galuppi, Piccinni, Paisiello, Cimarosa, and then the great comic operas of Mozart and, later, Rossini and Donizetti.
At first, comic operas were generally presented as intermezzi between acts of more serious works. Neapolitan and then Italian comic opera grew into an independent form and became the most popular form of staged entertainment in Italy from about 1750 to 1800. In 1749, thirteen years after Pergolesi's death, his La serva padrona swept Italy and France, evoking the praise of such French Enlightenment figures as Rousseau.
In 1760, Niccolò Piccinni wrote the music to La Cecchina to a text by the great Venetian playwright, Carlo Goldoni. That text was based on Samuel Richardson's popular English novel, Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded. Many years later, Verdi called La Cecchina the "first true Italian comic opera" - that is to say, it had everything: it was in standard Italian and not in dialect; it was no longer simply an intermezzo, but rather an independent piece; it had a real story that people liked; it had dramatic variety; and, musically, it had strong melodies and even strong supporting orchestral parts, including a strong "stand-alone" overture. Verdi was also enthusiastic because the music was by a southern Italian and the text by a northerner, which appealed to Verdi's pan-Italian vision.
The genre was developed further in the first half of the 19th century by Gioachino Rossini in his works such as The Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola and by Gaetano Donizetti in L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale, but declined in the mid-19th century, despite Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff staged in 1893.
French ''opéra comique'' and operetta
French composers eagerly seized upon the Italian model and made it their own, calling it opéra comique. Early proponents included the Italian Egidio Duni, François-André Philidor, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, André Grétry, François-Adrien Boïeldieu, Daniel François Auber and Adolphe Adam. Although originally reserved for less serious works, the term opéra comique came to refer to any opera that included spoken dialogue, including works such as Cherubini's Médée and Bizet's Carmen that are not "comic" in any sense of the word.Florimond Hervé is credited as the inventor of French opéra bouffe, or opérette. Working on the same model, Jacques Offenbach quickly surpassed him, writing over ninety operettas. Whereas earlier French comic operas had a mixture of sentiment and humour, Offenbach's works were intended solely to amuse. Though generally well crafted and full of humorous satire and grand opera parodies, plots and characters in his works were often interchangeable. Given the frenetic pace at which he worked, Offenbach sometimes used the same material in more than one opera. Another Frenchman who took up this form was Charles Lecocq.
German ''singspiel'' and Viennese operetta
The singspiel developed in 18th-century Vienna and spread throughout Austria and Germany. As in the French opéra comique, the singspiel was an opera with spoken dialogue, and usually a comic subject, such as Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail and The Magic Flute. Later singspiels, such as Beethoven's Fidelio and Weber's Der Freischütz, retained the form, but explored more serious subjects.19th century Viennese operetta was built on both the singspiel and the French model. Franz von Suppé is remembered mainly for his overtures. Johann Strauss II, the "waltz king", contributed Die Fledermaus and The Gypsy Baron. Carl Millöcker a long-time conductor at the Theater an der Wien, also composed some of the most popular Viennese operettas of the late 19th century, including Der Bettelstudent, Gasparone and Der arme Jonathan.
After the turn of the 20th century, Franz Lehár wrote The Merry Widow ; Oscar Straus supplied Ein Walzertraum and The Chocolate Soldier ; and Emmerich Kálmán composed Die Csárdásfürstin.
Spanish ''zarzuela''
Zarzuela, introduced in Spain in the 17th century, is rooted in popular Spanish traditional musical theatre. It alternates between spoken and sung scenes, the latter incorporating dances, with chorus numbers and humorous scenes that are usually duets. These works are relatively short, and ticket prices were often low, to appeal to the general public. There are two main forms of zarzuela: Baroque zarzuela, the earliest style, and Romantic zarzuela, which can be further divided into the two subgenres of género grande and género chico.Pedro Calderón de la Barca was the first playwright to adopt the term zarzuela for his work entitled El golfo de las sirenas. Lope de Vega soon wrote a work titled La selva sin amor, drama con orquesta. The instruments orchestra was hidden from the audience, the actors sang in harmony, and the musical composition itself was intended to evoke an emotional response. Some of these early pieces were lost, but Los celos hacen estrellas by Juan Hidalgo and Juan Vélez, which premiered in 1672, survives and gives us some sense of what the genre was like in the 17th century.
In the 18th century, the Italian operatic style influenced zarzuela. But beginning with the reign of Bourbon King Charles III, anti-Italian sentiment increased. Zarzuela returned to its roots in popular Spanish tradition in works such as the sainetes of Don Ramón de la Cruz. This author's first work in this genre was Las segadoras de Vallecas, with music by Rodríguez de Hita.
Single act zarzuelas were classified as género chico and zarzuelas of three or more acts were género grande. Zarzuela grande battled on at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid, but with little success and light attendance. In spite of this, in 1873 a new theater, the Teatro Apolo, was opened for zarzuela grande, which shared the failures of the Teatro de la Zarzuela, until it was forced to change its program to género chico.
Russian comic opera
The first opera presented in Russia, in 1731, was a comic opera, Calandro, by an Italian composer, Giovanni Alberto Ristori. It was followed by the comic operas of other Italians, like Galuppi, Paisiello and Cimarosa, and also Belgian/French composer Grétry.The first Russian comic opera was Anyuta. The text was written by Mikhail Popov, with music by an unknown composer, consisting of a selection of popular songs specified in the libretto. Another successful comic opera, The miller who was a wizard, a cheat and a matchmaker, text by Alexander Ablesimov, on a subject resembling Rousseau's Devin, is attributed to Mikhail Sokolovsky. Ivan Kerzelli, Vasily Pashkevich and Yevstigney Fomin also wrote a series of successful comic operas in the 18th century.
In the 19th century, Russian comic opera was further developed by Alexey Verstovsky who composed more 30 opera-vaudevilles and 6 grand operas. Later, Modest Mussorgsky worked on two comic operas, The Fair at Sorochyntsi and Zhenitba, which he left unfinished. Pyotr Tchaikovsky wrote a comic opera, Cherevichki. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov composed May Night 1878-1879 and The Golden Cockerel 1906-1907.
In the 20th century, the best examples of comic opera by Russian composers were Igor Stravinsky's Mavra and The Rake's Progress, Sergey Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges and Betrothal in a Monastery, and Dmitri Shostakovich's The Nose. Simultaneously, the genres of light music, operetta, musical comedy, and later, rock opera, were developed by such composers as Isaak Dunayevsky, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Tikhon Khrennikov, and later by Gennady Gladkov, Alexey Rybnikov and Alexander Zhurbin.
The 21st century in Russian comic opera began with the noisy premieres of two works whose genre could be described as "opera-farce": Tsar Demyan - A frightful opera performance. A collective project of five authors wrote the work: Leonid Desyatnikov and Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky from St. Petersburg, Iraida Yusupova and Vladimir Nikolayev from Moscow, and the creative collective "Kompozitor", which is a pseudonym for the well-known music critic Pyotr Pospelov. The libretto is by Elena Polenova, based on a folk-drama, Tsar Maksimilyan, and the work premiered on June 20, 2001, at the Mariinski Theatre, St Petersburg. Prize "Gold Mask, 2002" and "Gold Soffit, 2002".
The Children of Rosenthal, an opera in two acts by Leonid Desyatnikov, with a libretto by Vladimir Sorokin. This work was commissioned by the Bolshoi theatre and premiered on March 23, 2005. The staging of the opera was accompanied by juicy scandal; however it was an enormous success.