Opera buffa and play culture

This dissertation deals with the opera buffa phenomenon under the aspect of play, i.e. it analyses a genre of the so-called European art music in a culturological-anthropological perspective. The fact that play and/or the ludic element constitutes a fundamental feature of this type of opera is demonstrated by the genre denomination itself, used during the 18th century, when on the front pages of most buffa libretti and scores the indication dramma giocoso appeared. In reality, in the opera research tradition the ludic aspect of this genre is mentioned at most incidentally and remains mostly unquestioned, as if it were supposed to be so-to-say self-evident. Therefore, this work pursues the goal to subject this basic aspect to a thorough investigation, in order to approach the understanding of the actual value and meaning of this opera genre within the historical context and to understand the reasons of its extraordinary success all over Europe during the 18th century as well as the particular fascination it exerted. For this analysis, the Venetian opera buffa repertoire during the period from 1770 to 1790 is used as an exemplary case, because a spatial and temporal delimitation of the works to be examined was absolutely necessary. To this end, Venice appears to be particularly apt since it was the richest city of the 18th century in terms of operas (Strohm, 1979) and the cradle of the opera buffa, inasmuch as at that time the town cherished an extraordinarily distinctive play and carnival culture and became famous as the European capital of amusement. The period 1770-1790, that constituted the golden age of the opera buffa and at the same time gave rise to a real international boom of this genre, which just at that time was considered the international cultural event par excellence (Wiesend, 1995), was chosen for its particular representativity. In spite of the above-mentioned delimitation, that is necessary for practical reasons, nevertheless the thesis according to which the ludic element is a central poetical and reception-aesthetic category of this genre, generally refers to the opera buffa phenomenon as a whole. Because of the multifacetedness of the play concept Grimms dictionary lists 23 meanings for the noun play (Spiel) as well as 132 different examples of use, and not for nothing Ludwig Wittgenstein chose just the word play to clarify his theory of the impossibility of exact concept definitions and for want of a comprehensive play theory a methodological pluralism seemed to be preferable as a theoretical basis. Starting from a complex discourse of non-mathematical theories of play, derived from different disciplines (mainly cultural anthropology, behavioural research, psychology, pedagogy and philosophy), as many as possible different essential features and facets of play were enucleated and subsequently used to detect the moments of play in the opera buffa. In this regard, it has to be pointed out that the investigation related to the ludic elements is not limited to the single works of this genre, but involves also their performance context. Thus, after two outline chapters (II. Venice as a culture and opera centre; III. Play and play theories), the attempt is made to theoretically transfer the play concept to the context of the opera buffa performance (IV. Opera buffa in the light of play theories), focusing in particular the opera house as a place where various types of plays and games are performed, as well as opera-going itself considered a social event or play (comprising hazard games and masking of the public), but also theatre, music and performance as ludic forms. In addition, reference is made to the wider context, i.e. the particularly playful town of Venice, the connection between carnival and opera season etc., before concretely dwelling thoroughly on the core of the genre (V. Genre conventions of the opera buffa as rules of the game) and the single works themselves (VI. Elements of play in examples from operas). The connection between the contents of the opera buffa and its performance context is constantly highlighted, and at the same time relativised, especially in the conclusive part of the work. The play concept, whose fascinating multifacetedness allows to bring different levels of the genre and its performance context to a single common denominator, is used as an interpretive key for the whole of this cultural phenomenon.