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Updated: May 22, 2025
Though Rameau enjoyed supremacy over the serious opera, a great excitement was created in Paris by the arrival of an Italian company, who in 1752 obtained permission to perform Italian burlettas and intermezzi at the opera-house. The partisans of the French school took alarm, and the admirers of Lulli and Rameau forgot their bickerings to join forces against the foreign intruders.
But in the beginning it was unquestionably the outcome of a hostility to these very things, or at any rate to their merely spectacular employment. Peri, Caccini, Bardi and others of the Florentine "camerata" were engaged as composers, stage managers, actors and singers in many of the elaborate court spectacles, intermezzi and madrigal dramas produced toward the end of the sixteenth century.
Indeed, the members of the young Florentine coterie were generally concerned in this fête and doubtless found much to move them toward their new conception. The Count of Vernio's comedy "Amico Fido" was played and was accompanied by six spectacular intermezzi with music. The first of these was by Ottavio Rinuccini, author of "Dafne" and "Euridice," usually called the first operas.
We shall perceive, then, in the productions of some representative masters of the madrigal drama in the latter half of the sixteenth century, an expression of this Italian eagerness to abandon even the external attitude of serious contemplation, which the spectacular delights of the intermezzi and the serious lyric drama had made at least tolerable, and to turn to the uses of pure amusement the materials of a clearly defined form of art.
The genesis of the southern branch of opera buffa may with certainty be traced to the intermezzi, or musical interludes, which were introduced into the course of operas and dramas, probably with the object of relieving the mental strain induced by the effort of following a long serious performance.
He utilized instruments freely in connection with voices and his works give an excellent insight into the general condition of vocal composition in Italy in his day. He became prominent as one of the early composers of intermezzi and he was employed also to write church music for wedding festivals.
In 1591 Vincenzo Gonzaga, now duke, summoned Guarini to Mantua, and matters advanced as far as a prova generale or dress rehearsal. The project, however, had once more to be abandoned owing to the death of Cardinal Gianvincenzo Gonzaga at Rome. We possess the scheme for the four intermezzi designed for this occasion, representing the Musica della Terra, del Mare, dell' Aria, and Celeste.
We should think it strange if an audience nowadays refused to sit through 'Hamlet' unless it were diversified by occasional scenes from 'Box and Cox. As time went on, the proportions and general character of these intermezzi acquired greater importance, but it was not until the eighteenth century was well advanced that one of them was promoted to the rank of an independent opera, and, instead of being performed in scraps between the acts of a tragedy, was given for the first time as a separate work.
Now the cities of Tuscany entered, each accompanied by a symbolical procession, and sang their praises to the bride. The second entertainment was a prose comedy of Landi, preceded by a prologue and provided with five intermezzi. In the first intermezzo Aurora, in a blazing chariot, awakened all nature by her song.
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