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. This honour was accorded to
Pergolesi's 'La Serva Padrona,' in 1734, and the great success which it
met with everywhere soon caused numberless imitations to spring up, so
that in a few years opera buffa in Italy was launched upon a career of
triumph.
Founded as it was in avowed imitation of the tragedy of the Greeks,
opera had never deigned to touch modern life at any point. For a long
time the subjects of Italian operas were taken solely from classical
legend, and though in time librettists were compelled to have recourse
to the medieval romances, they never ventured out of an antiquity more
or less remote. Thus it is easy to conceive the delight of the
music-loving people of Naples when they found that the opera which they
adored could be enjoyed in combination with a mirthful and even farcical
story, interpreted by characters who might have stepped out of one of
their own market-places.
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