Opera Buffa - Relation To and Differences From Opera Seria

Relation To and Differences From Opera Seria

While opera seria deals with gods and ancient heroes and only occasionally contained comic scenes, opera buffa involves the predominant use of comic scenes, characters, and plot lines in a contemporary setting. The traditional model for opera seria had three acts, dealt with serious subjects in mythical settings as stated above and used high voices (both sopranos and castrati) for principal characters, often even for monarchs. In contrast, the model that generally held for opera buffa was having two acts (as, for example, The Barber of Seville), dealing with comic scenes and situations as earlier stated and using the lower male voices to the exclusion of the castrati. This led to the creation of the characteristic "basso buffo", a specialist in patter who was the center of most of the comic action. (A well-known basso buffo role is Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni).

Read more about this topic:  Opera Buffa

Famous quotes containing the words relation to, relation, differences and/or opera:

    Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.
    Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)

    There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.
    Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)

    The opera house sparkled with tiers
    And tiers of eyes, like mine enlarged by belladonna,
    James Merrill (b. 1926)