The tenor part was usually the sentimental, unhappy lover, and required most from the singer, but there were often two tenor parts, in which case one was comic; the buffo tenor was not however nearly so well defined a part as the buffo bass. The bass parts were decidedly comic; a blustering old man and a cunning or a stupid servant were seldom wanting. When the lover was a bass, he was either jovial or comical.
In spite of all this freedom, certain typical features were formed that recur in all the varieties of grouping and disguise. The opera buffa was far from adopting in dialect or costume the well-defined character, of the Italian popular comedy, but the resemblance in form is unmistakable. It was in imitation of the popular plays that the comic parts were made caricatures, the effect of which depended on striking but exaggerated peculiarities. The music was made to display these,[ 8 ] and there can be no doubt that the want of individual character in the opera seria favoured the passage to the opposite extreme in the opera buffa. As a relief to the caricatures, mezzo carattere were invented, in which the purely musical element was more pronounced.
Intermezzi required an easy and loosely connected plot; the popular jokes would not have come out so well from a studied, well-connected drama, as from effective situations where favourite characters could follow their bent. If the situations were of ample variety, lively and humorous in their rendering, the audience was quite ready to forget how weak the thread was which held them together. The opera buffa was always written for a specified company, and the FORMS OF OPERA BUFFA. poet, limited both as to characters and effective situations, found his labour simplified by such a skilful use of the conditions ready to hand as should secure him applause and success.[ 9 ] Opera buffa, being held in little esteem, was seldom taken in hand by poets of note; even Goldoni's texts are, as he acknowledges himself,[ 10 ] unworthy of esteem. Goethe,[ 11 ] when he was studying the comic opera in Rome with the composer Kayser, remarked, that "there were a hundred things to be observed, to which the Italians sacrificed the spirit of the poetry; for instance, each character was to be brought forward in a certain order and a certain degree—each singer must have pauses, &C."[ 12 ] His own experience gave him a very just judgment on opera texts, and he rightly ascribed a certain amount of simplicity, which, apart from the music, made them appear poor and meagre, to a tendency to treat the subject fancifully, like a child's fairy story.[ 13 ] But the majority of comic libretti are disconnected and absurd, without spirit or delicacy, depending entirely on the effect of humorous exaggeration; and the universal opinion was a just one, that the words of the comic opera were as poor as the music was charming.[ 14 ]
The musical forms of the opera seria were modified and remodelled by the comic composers with very unequal skill and success. The recitative needed little transformation; the more trivial treatment of the dialogue suggested itself, and the accompanied recitative was only varied to suit the comic situations. The aria, on the contrary, belonged essentially to musical art, and had been developed at the cost of dramatic truth; opera buffa did not concern itself with either of these facts. It adopted the forms of the opera seria (unless when it parodied them) only in the parts di mezzo car ottere which it had appropriated from the opera seria.
The contrasting of different motifs was preserved as an essential condition of musical composition, but the rules as to method and succession were no longer regarded as binding. The subjects were more slender and fugitive, so as to be more easily united, and they profited thereby in freedom of movement and form. In many airs which have only one tempo, the constituent parts of the original aria can be clearly recognised, but the subjects are arranged and repeated according to circumstances, the subordinate subjects are more important and longer, and the means at command are more freely used. Piccinni was the first to introduce the rondo form, which repeats the main subject several times with freely treated intermediate movements. It met with great applause, and was variously developed, being at last adopted in opera seria.[ 15 ] But the simpler form of the cavatina was more usual, and received many modifications; the ballad style was also not infrequent.
This freedom and many-sidedness of treatment was more especially favourable to the dramatic aspect of the piece, and brought the plot into closer relationship with the music, particularly in the ensembles. Duets, terzets, and quartets were introduced wherever the situation required, and this musical dramatic character reached its highest point in the finales, which are true musical representations of a dramatic climax ascending to a catastrophe. These finales, products of the continual struggle to render music not the ornament but the helpmeet of the drama, are the property of the opera buffa.
Nic. Logroscini, who was considered as the inventor of comic opera, and the deity of the genre bouffon,[ 16 ] is said to have written the first finale, the main subject of which was developed in one continuous movement. Nic. Piccinni (whose "Buona Figliuola" was so well received in Rome in 1761, that it may serve as a date for the recognition of opera DEVELOPMENT OF OPERA BUFFA. buffa as a distinct branch of the art) treated each scena of the finale as a separate movement, and displayed far greater variety and more effective working-up.
Many of the deficiencies of the text must have had considerable influence on the music. The latter was constantly striving after dramatic effect and characteristic situations, and was as constantly dragged back by caricature and absurdity. The custom also arose of providing unworthy comic effects for the buffo characters, such as the mimicry of natural sounds, quick speaking, and others that have become gradually extinct. On this point the severe mentorship of the opera seria exerted a wholesome influence in preventing the complete sacrifice of form to fun; so that, to the observer of the present day, regularity of form is more observable in comic opera than freedom of treatment.
From opera seria too the comic opera received its main principle, viz.: that the essence of the opera is in music, and more especially in song, on the suitable treatment of which it depends for all its effect.