She is helped by
Scapin, the valet, who, disguised as a captain, makes violent love to
her, and piques the old gentleman into proposing, almost against his
will. 'La Serva Padrona' made the tour of Europe, and was received
everywhere with tumultuous applause. In Paris it was performed in 1750,
and may be said at once to have founded the school of French opera
comique. Rousseau extolled its beauty as a protest against the arid
declamation of the school of Lulli, and it was the subject of one of the
bitterest dissensions ever known in the history of music. But the
'Guerre des Bouffons,' as the struggle was called, proved one thing,
which had already been satisfactorily decided in Italy, namely, that
there was plenty of room in the world for serious and comic opera at the
same time.
There had been a kind of opera comique in France for many years, a
species of musical pantomime which was very popular at the fairs of St.
Laurent and St. Gervais. This form of entertainment scarcely came
within the province of art, but it served as a starting-point for the
history of opera comique, which was afterwards so brilliant. The success
of the Italian company which performed the comic operas of Pergolesi,
Jomelli, and others, fired the French composers to emulation, and in
1753 the first French opera comique, in the strict sense of the word,
'Le Devin du Village,' by the great Rousseau, was performed at the
Academie de Musique.
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