Literally, an entr’acte. The term was applied during the 18th century, in place of the earlier Intermedio, to a miniature comic opera in Italian (the French counterpart is the Intermède) involving two characters (rarely three or more), performed in segments between the acts of a larger work, usually an opera seria. The genre flourished during the first half of the 18th century, then gradually disappeared, giving way to the fully fledged comic opera (see Opera buffa). Often, especially in earlier years, its name appeared in the plural as ‘intermezzi’, sometimes also ‘intermedii’, ‘scherzi musicali’ etc. This referred to its performance during the entr’actes (hence the plural) of the larger work; but from the very beginning the intermezzo was unified by a single plot and cast of characters. The segments (in effect, the ‘acts’ of the intermezzo) were known as ‘parti’, as in ‘intermezzo di due (tre) parti’. Two such ‘parts’ (performed between Acts 1 and 2 and Acts 2 and 3) were commoner than three; a third ‘part’, if present, was performed before the final change of scene in the main presentation.
The intermezzo traces its ancestry to the comic scenes of Seicento opera which, towards the end of the century, were beginning to fade away. Venice took the lead in ‘expurgating’ the librettos of the dramma per musica of its ‘improprieties’ in an attempt to lend it some of the dignity of classical tragedy. Comic scenes were glaring instances of such breaches of taste; hence their gradual removal. By the first years of the 18th century comic scenes had become rare in Venice, though not entirely absent. One important consequence of their reduction was to deprive the specialized buffo singers of their niche.
It is therefore not surprising that the earliest intermezzos known to us today were performed in Venice. And though the term may crop up earlier, in connection with the comic scenes of 17th-century opera (as in Domenico Gabrielli’s Flavio Cuniberto, 1688), Venetian intermezzos differed from traditional comic scenes in that they introduced entirely new plots and characters, and very soon developed their own, independent dramatic procedures. The very first one appears to have been Frappolone e Florinetta, performed at the S Cassiano theatre in February 1706 between the acts of the opera Statira by Francesco Gasparini. The libretto was not printed; it survives as an anonymous manuscript (I-Vnm) but may be ascribed with certainty to Pariati (the music, now lost, was most probably by the composer of the main opera, Gasparini). There may well have been other intermezzos performed, but not published, at about that time: only in October 1707 did the Venetian censorship require publication of intermezzo librettos, thus placing them under its supervision.
The S Angelo theatre briefly entered the field, but during the next few years it was the S Cassiano, with Pariati as poet and Gasparini and (later) Albinoni as composers, that presented the most successful intermezzos. At least three of these were to gain widespread fame as their interpreters, the Mantuan basso buffo G.B. Cavana and the Bolognese contralto Santa Marchesini, set out on their travels: Gasparini’s Erighetta e Don Chilone (1707) and Parpagnacco (1708), and Albinoni’s Pimpinone (1708), the score of which is the earliest specimen of its kind to survive. Erighetta is loosely modelled on Le malade imaginaire by Molière, who was to become a favourite source of subjects for intermezzos.
In contrast to the Venetian practice of only sporadically performing such independent intermezzos with opere serie, the Neapolitan custom during the first two decades of the 18th century was to incorporate comic scenes into nearly every new opera; local composers, including Giuseppe Vignola, Francesco Mancini, Francesco Feo and Leonardo Leo, added the traditional scene buffe to works first produced elsewhere without them. After 1720, when the comic elements finally gained complete independence from the opera seria libretto, the Neapolitan intermezzo entered a golden age, exemplified in the works of such composers as Domenico Sarro (intermezzos of Brunetta e Burlotto frequently revived under the title La capricciosa e il credulo, 1720), Hasse (La contadina, 1728), Pergolesi (La serva padrona, 1733) and Giuseppe Sellitto (La vedova ingegnosa, 1735). Neapolitan librettists of that time include Bernardo Saddumene, G.A. Federico and Tommaso Mariani, all of whom were at the same time providing texts for the new, full-length opere buffe playing in that city’s smaller theatres.
Substantial contributions to the intermezzo repertory were made by the Bolognese composer G.M. Orlandini, whose works, including the enormously successful Il marito giocatore (1719), had their first performances in different Italian cities and seem to belong to no particular local tradition. Important figures active outside Italy include Francesco Conti (Vienna) and Telemann (Hamburg).
Apart from Molière’s comedies, at least six of which were adapted as librettos for intermezzos (e.g. Antonio Salvi’s version of Le bourgeois gentilhomme, published at Florence in 1722 as L’artigiano gentiluomo), librettists made use of a variety of other sources. Situations from the commedia dell’arte were ready to hand, and there is no doubt that intermezzo singers learnt much from their confrères in the matter of acting; unwritten lazzi (sight gags) were part of their stock-in-trade, as several contemporary writers testify. ‘These buffoons cry, roar with laughter, throw themselves about, indulge in all manner of pantomime, and never deviate from the beat by so much as an eighth of a second’, wrote Président de Brosses from Rome in 1740. The English traveller Edward Wright, in an account of intermezzo singers he heard at Venice about 1720, wrote: ‘They laugh, scold, imitate other Sounds, as the cracking of a Whip, the rumbling of Chariot Wheels, and all to Music’. Although some of these effects were doubtless improvised by the performers, musical scores furnish abundant examples of written-out portrayals of laughter, sneezing, weeping, the palpitations of a love sick heart and the like. Other important characteristics of the buffo style exemplified in the intermezzo include a lively, frequently disjunct vocal line; constant repetition of short, balanced phrases; parody effects directed mainly at the musical conventions of opera seria; and – above all – absolute fidelity of music to text, frequently manifested by extreme changes of tempo and style within a single aria or duet. As a contrast to the prevailing buffo style, composers sometimes introduced mock-pathetic numbers and arias modelled on dance rhythms. From their texts and occasional stage directions, it appears that the latter were sometimes actually danced by the parti buffe, whose favourite step seems to have been the minuet.
Stock comedy figures, such as the old man and the braggart captain, people the world of the intermezzo. By far the most common of the stock types is the cunning servant girl, widow or shepherdess who, despite her humble station, through feminine wiles plays a burla (trick) on her male partner or ensnares him in matrimony. Often the soubrette’s name indicates her sharp cunning, as, for example, Serpina (‘little snake’) in Federico’s La serva padrona (1733) or Vespetta (‘little wasp’) in Pariati’s Pimpinone (1708). Other common dramatic themes include the supernatural, probably deriving from the close connection between the comic characters and transformations of the intermedi in 17th-century opera, and satire directed at the opera seria (e.g. Sarro’s L’impresario delle isole Canarie, 1724, attributed to Metastasio).
The intermezzo exhibits nearly as rigid a standard musical format as contemporary opera seria. Each ‘part’ customarily contains one or two arias for each of the two singing roles (one or more mute roles frequently appear) and a final duet, all in da capo form and separated by secco recitatives. Accompanied recitative appears infrequently and usually in a parody context, while overtures and other types of independent instrumental music are lacking altogether or confined to short, concluding dance pieces. But stylistically it is more progressive; its simple harmonies, homophonic accompaniments, general melodiousness and symmetrical phrase structure are clear harbingers of later 18th-century Classical style.
The vogue of intermezzos spread quickly to the playhouse, where commedia dell’arte companies were fighting a losing battle to retain some of the audience they had lost to opera. As early as 1711, comedians inserted musical intermezzos between the acts of their plays at the S Samuele theatre, Venice; in the 1730s Carlo Goldoni served his theatrical apprenticeship as purveyor of intermezzo librettos to another company acting at that theatre.
During the first half of the 18th century travelling singers, among them the celebrated team of Antonio Ristorini and Rosa Ungarelli, carried the intermezzo repertory throughout Italy and to nearly every European city that supported Italian opera; intermezzos performed between the acts of commedia dell’arte plays at Moscow in 1731 preceded by five years the earliest opere serie heard in Russia. Intermezzo performances by itinerant troupes are recorded as early as 1716 in Wolfenbüttel, 1717 in Brunswick and Dresden, 1724 in Prague, 1726 in Mannheim, 1727 in Breslau and 1737 in London. The process of diffusion continued with the tours of Angelo and Pietro Mingotti’s opera companies in Austria, Germany and Denmark betwen 1737 and 1760 and in conjunction with the pantomimes presented by the impresario Nicolini’s troupe of Piccoli Olandesi (Dutch children) in central Europe between about 1745 and 1750. Perhaps the most significant of the intermezzo’s extra-territorial conquests was Paris. Performances of opere buffe and intermezzos there during the seasons of 1752–4 by a troupe of singers brought from Strasbourg by Eustachio Bambini precipitated the Querelle des Bouffons, a literary polemic which inspired many musical parodies and imitations that opened a new chapter in the history of French opera.
By 1750 ballets had almost completely supplanted intermezzos as the principal entr’acte diversions in performances of opere serie, although works to music by such composers as Rinaldo da Capua, Gioacchino Cocchi, Niccolò Piccinni and Baldassare Galuppi continued to figure occasionally between the acts of Italian spoken plays throughout the remainder of the 18th century. Because of the size of their casts (up to seven), which permitted large-scale ensembles and concerted finales, these intermezzos, or ‘farsette’ as they were often called, differ little from contemporary opere buffe except in length and function (see Farsa). Many, in fact, were simply versions of full-length comic operas shortened to fit between the acts of a play and reduced to fit the number of available singers (e.g. Il filosofo di campagna, an opera buffa by Goldoni and Galuppi, Venice, 1754, and La serva astuta, a condensed version performed as an intermezzo at Venice in 1761).
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CHARLES E. TROY, PIERO WEISS