ARTH 25 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: La Serva Padrona, Opera Seria, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
7 May 2020
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Document Summary
Chapter 13: vocal music in the classical era. As italian opera seria increasingly became concerned with very serious topics, and continued to eliminate comic characters and subplots, there grew need for a different type of opera that would be more light-hearted in nature. Ultimately, true comic opera forms developed in various countries. Italian opera developed a special kind of comic intermission entertainment called intermezzo. These short operas were in two scenes, and were presented by a different set of singers during the intermissions of opera seria performances. Usually making use of only two or three singers, the plots involved real people and everyday life, as opposed to the great heroes, ancient gods or kings from antiquity that dominated the plots of opera seria. The singers of the intermezzi were not always the best trained, and they rarely included castrato voices.
