Lights on the courtly spectacle among the Northern Seas: Anna of Denmark from Copenhagen to the throne of Scotland (1574-1590)

Abstract

Opera buffa started during the 1740s as a structural extension of the comic intermezzo tradition of the preceding decades, from which it inherited the production system based on long lasting troupes of male and female singers. They often married and their children sometimes later joined their parents’ activity and company. This net of parental relations among buffo singers had important consequences, since singing and acting styles were passed down from parents to children from the era of Pergolesi to that of Mozart and beyond. This production efficiency favoured ample dissemination of the buffo repertoire but also produced resistance to stylistic changes which caused the extinction of the opera buffa tradition during the first half the 19th Century.