(Fr.).
In 18th-century France the customary designation for Italian opera buffa performed in the original language or in French translation (for example, Paisiello’s Le roi Théodore à Venise, a 1786 parody of Il re Teodoro in Venezia). It was also occasionally applied to opéras comiques whose plots were indebted to Italian or Spanish prototypes for characterizations or dramatic construction and, more broadly, to those in which the comedy approached farce (as in Philidor’s Blaise le savetier of 1759 and Grétry’s Les deux avares of 1770). A few contemporary writers, notably Contant d’Orville, used opéra bouffon as a synonym for opéra comique.
A.G. Contant d’Orville: Histoire de l’opéra bouffon (Amsterdam and Paris, 1768)
A.C. Quatremère de Quincy: ‘Dissertation sur les opéras bouffons italiens’, Mercure de France (March 1789), 124–48 [also pubd separately]
N. Framery: De l’organisation des spectacles de Paris (Paris, 1790)
L. Péricaud: Théâtre de ‘Monsieur’ (Paris, 1908)
M. Robinson: ‘Opera buffa into opéra comique, 1771–90’, Music and the French Revolution: Cardiff 1989, 37–56
M. Noiray: ‘Le répertoire d’opéra italien au Théâtre de Monsieur et au Théâtre Feydeau (janvier 1789–août 1792)’, RdM, lxxxi (1995), 259–75
A. Fabiano: I ‘buffoni’ alla conquista di Parigi tra ‘Ancien Régime’ e Restaurazione (1752–1815) (Turin, 1998)
A. Di Profio: L'opera buffa à Paris: le cas du Théâtre de Monsieur/Feydeau (1789–1815) (diss., U. of Tours, 1999)
M. Noiray: ‘L'opera italiana in Francia nel XVIII secolo’, SOI, ii (forthcoming)
M. ELIZABETH C. BARTLET