opera buffa

opera buffa, or opéra bouffe, are comic intermezzos initially inserted between the acts of opera seria. Comic scenes were included in Italian opera in the seventeenth century, but they were soon dropped from serious works, probably on account of contemporary obedience to the classical injunction against including comic and tragic elements in the same work. The comic aspect of operatic productions was not banished from the theatre, however, because it constituted an essential part of theatrical…