Shakespeare has taught us to accept an infusion of the comic element in plays of a serious cast, but Shakespeare was an innovator, a Romanticist, and, measured by old standards, his dramas are irregular. The Italians, who followed classic models, for a reason amply explained by the genesis of the art-form, rigorously excluded comedy from serious operas, except as intermezzi, until they hit upon a third classification, which they called Opera semiseria, in which a serious subject was enlivened with comic episodes. Our dramatic tastes being grounded in Shakespeare, we should be inclined to put down "Don Giovanni" as a musical tragedy; or, haunted by the Italian terminology, as Opera semiseria; but Mozart calls it Opera buffa, more in deference to the librettist's work, I fancy, than his own, for, as I have suggested elsewhere,[E] the musician's imagination in the fire of composition went far beyond the conventional fancy of the librettist in the finale of that most wonderful work.
An Opera buffa.
French Grand Opéra.
Opéra comique.
"Mignon."
"Faust."
It is well to remember that "Don Giovanni" is an Opera buffa when watching the buffooneries of Leporello, for that alone justifies them. The French have Grand Opéra, in which everything is sung to orchestra accompaniment, there being neither spoken dialogue nor dry recitative, and Opéra comique, in which the dialogue is spoken. The latter corresponds with the honorable German term Singspiel, and one will not go far astray if he associate both terms with the English operas of Wallace and Balfe, save that the French and Germans have generally been more deft in bridging over the chasm between speech and song than their British rivals. Opéra comique has another characteristic, its dénouement must be happy. Formerly the Théatre national de l'Opéra-Comique in Paris was devoted exclusively to Opéra comique as thus defined (it has since abolished the distinction and Grand Opéra may be heard there now), and, therefore, when Ambroise Thomas brought forward his "Mignon," Goethe's story was found to be changed so that Mignon recovered and was married to Wilhelm Meister at the end. The Germans are seldom pleased with the transformations which their literary masterpieces are forced to undergo at the hands of French librettists. They still refuse to call Gounod's "Faust" by that name; if you wish to hear it in Germany you must go to the theatre when "Margarethe" is performed. Naturally they fell indignantly afoul of "Mignon," and to placate them we have a second finale, a dénouement allemand, provided by the authors, in which Mignon dies as she ought.
Grosse Oper.
Comic opera and operetta.
Opéra bouffe.