Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.
Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria. It quickly made its way to France, where it became opéra bouffon, and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner.
The influence of the Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include Viennese operetta, German singspiel, Spanish zarzuela, Russian comic opera, English ballad opera, and Savoy Opera.
Read more about Comic Opera: Italian Comic Opera, French opéra Comique and opérette, German singspiel and Viennese operetta, Spanish zarzuela, English Light Opera, Russian Comic Opera, North American Operetta
Famous quotes containing the words comic and/or opera:
“Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I have witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)