Are You an Opera Buffa Expert?

Italian opera buffa is a genre of opera characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing, and associated with humor. It was especially popular in Naples in the 18th century, then spread to Rome and northern Italy. The genre arose in reaction to opera seria, with which it shares many conventions but differs in its focus on common people and their problems. Opera buffa is often associated with stock characters derived from the Italian commedia dell'arte. The genre declined in the mid-19th century, despite Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff staged in 1893. The French term for opera buffa is opéra bouffon, which also applies to French opéras comiques with Italianate or farcical plots. The first major composers of opera buffa were Alessandro Scarlatti, Nicola Logroscino, and Baldassare Galuppi, all based in Naples or Venice. The genre's importance diminished during the Romantic period. With Rossini, a standard distribution of four characters was reached: a prima donna soubrette, a light, amorous tenor, a basso cantante or baritone capable of lyrical, mostly ironical expression, and a basso buffo whose vocal skills must extend to the baritone for the purposes of comic duets. 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.