Some musical entertainment of a lighter character had antedated opera buffa, and, in 1639, a musical comedy by Mazzocchi and Marazzoli was performed in Florence, the poet Milton being present to applaud its Jest and youthful jollity, Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, Nods and becks and wreathed smiles.
One of the most famous of these promoted intermezzi was Pergolesi's " La Serva Padrone," which for a century was looked upon as its most admirable example. It was taken to Paris in 1750 and may be said to have founded the school of French opera comique, essentially a French crea tion, and which, in stage terminology, has come to mean any opera with spoken dialogue, no matter how serious the subject.
Previous to this, musical pantomime occasionally had enlivened French fairs and festivals. Its more ambitious form was received with such acclamation that the advocates of the serious school remonstrated and a " war of the buf fans " was waged. The first true comic opera, " Le Devin du Village," was produced by the famous Rousseau and performed at the Academie de Musique. Monsigny placed opera comique on a firmer basis by fusing the merits of the French and Italian schools, and Gretry, with his fifty or more works, carried it to a yet higher plane.
In Germany any dramatic entertainment in which music and dialogue alternated was known as singspiel or song-play, and, as such, still has a regular place on the German stage. John Adam Hiller was the first to cultivate the Teutonic prototype of the comic opera.
The movement became evident in England with the ballad opera, which today in every quarter of the globe retains its standing as a popular entertainment. " The Beg gar's Opera " was the most famous of the lot, attaining to a popularity unrivaled before or since, even by its charming descendants, the Gilbert-Sullivan operettas. It is a keen satire on the politicians and courtiers of that day, and de picts their irregularities in a fashion which must have been more than disconcerting. The dialogue, written by John Gay, is interspersed with sixty-nine English and Scotch ballads arranged and scored by Dr. Pepusch. It was first produced in London, January 29, 1728.
The conventional Italian opera, which impresario Handel was producing at the Haymarket to his own financial ruin, came in with the courtiers for its share of the scoring, which may have added impetus to the reformatory movement that crystallized a number of years later in Gluck. Says the Beggar in the prologue, with his tongue in his cheek, " I hope I may be forgiven that I have not made my opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue."
The rise of opera buffa at this time was fortunate in that it provided for the delicate, human genius of Mozart a more congenial channel than the heavy tragedy which had for so long been held in esteem. He was neither a reformer nor an iconoclast ; he serenely accepted conditions as he found them, and his influence is rather in the light of an inspiration. Gounod has been both preceded and seconded in the rapturous panegyric in which he exclaims of Mozart's masterpiece, " Don Juan," " It has influenced my life like a revelation. It stands in my thoughts like an incarnation of dramatic and musical impeccability." Goethe swears with similar enthusiasm, that one had not lived who has not heard " Don Juan." The story of his operatic career is as quaint and moving as one of his pieces. His first opera, " La Finta Semplice," was written at the age of twelve, after a childhood which reads like a fairy tale. It is hard to imagine how the winsome, affectionate boy could have had enemies who prevented the production of the piece. It is not hard to imagine how the quivering lip and tear-welled eye of the mature composer could touch the Archbishop of Salsburg to arrange a special performance for his conso lation after a year which, as we who have been twelve-year olds well know, may be quite as long as a century. In view of this, we shall have to forgive the Archbishop for his five pound per annum stipend.
" Idomeno," produced in the composer's early manhood, was superior in concerted music and instrumentation to any opera yet written, and practically laid the foundation for modern orchestration. It was Mozart, too, who developed the act-finale which Logroscino had invented. By his three great operas, " Don Juan," " The Marriage of Figaro " and the " Magic Flute," he fused the best of the different national schools, lifting the lyric drama to hitherto unreached heights, and providing a lofty ideal of musical character drawing. As his admirable biographer, Otto Jahn, affirms, " He assembled the traditions of a long period of develop ment and put the finishing stroke to it." In short, the sub sequent history of opera would have lost half its luster had not this delicate, simple, improvident, irresponsible, wholly lovable person made the world his habitation for thirty five years.