I am writing this entry in response to the guide questions given in class regarding a video we watched. We are tackling Chapter 20 - Musical Taste and Style in the Enlightenment. I will talk more about it in the next entry.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (4 January 1710 - 16 March 1736) was an Italian composer, organist, and violinist. He studied music in Jesi (now province Ancona in Italy) under a local musician, Francesco Santini, before going to Naples in 1725 where he studied more under others. He was one of the most important early composers of opera buffa. Pergolesi suffered from ill health throughout his life and died young from tuberculosis. His opera seria, Il prigionier superbo, contained the the two-act intermezzo (in 18th century, was a comic operatic interlude inserted between acts or scenes of an opera seria. These intermezzi could be substantial and complete works themselves), La Serva Padrona. It One of his best and most celebrated stage works. La Serva Padrona was first produced in Naples at the San Bartolomeo theater on September 5, 1733 and had great success in Europe following Pergolesi's death.
Interior of the Teatro San Bartolomeo
There are only two short acts, and only three characters, one of whom is a mute male servant. The two singing parts are for Umberto, a middle-aged man, and his pert/cheeky servant Serpina. The story is about Serpina plotting to marry her master (my thoughts as I was watching the video: she succeeds and I don't know why she planned that in the first place. Perhaps the reason is up to the audience. To be honest.. I could not get the rationality in the character's decisions at all so it was interesting to watch/discover but the story is definitely not my cup of tea. BUT my thoughts now after some studying: maybe I could understand their actions if I watched the whole opera).
- Italian term meaning “comic opera”.
- An opera buffa was a parallel development and a contrast to opera seria/serious opera in which the story was a tragedy (a play that ends badly for the protagonist or others). There were no dialogues as everything was sung. The story was presented in recitative ("to recite"/tell a story quite quickly that it becomes speech-like), and there were arias ((Italian: "air"/"tune". Had more musical interest than recitative. Arias were usually in what we call “ABA” form (main section -> middle part -> main section repeated) or “Da Capo”/"back to beginning" form. In the Da Capo section the singer usually improvised, adding many embellishments and ornaments. The aria gave performers the opportunity to show off their virtuosity) or the characters to show their feelings and show off their voices)).
- "An opera buffa was usually a full length work: one which would fill a whole evening’s entertainment. It was different from an “intermezzo” which was a short musical comedy that was performed during the intervals of a musical tragedy, although the difference between the two is not always obvious. The intermezzo became longer and longer during the 18th century and gradually developed into opera buffa. Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrone was an intermezzo which became very famous after Pergolesi’s death. It influenced opera buffa" (THIS PARAGRAPH MADE THINGS CLEAR TO ME BECAUSE i couldn't tell if La Serva Padrona was an intermezzo or an opera buffa and their differences until I read this).
- "It was, in part, intended as a genre that the common man could relate to more easily. Whereas opera seria was an entertainment that was both made for and depicted kings and nobility, opera buffa was made for and depicted common people with more common problems."
- "The rapid Europe-wide dissemination of La Serva Padrona also hastened the reform of the stilted conventions of serious opera, whose stiff formalism lacked the color, verve, and flexibility of the lowbrow newcomer."
So I confidently conclude that the last two quotations above state the reasons for this intermezzo's popularity.
Sources: wikipedia, britannica
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