Composers | Genres | Operas | Libretti | Arias | About
Opera buffa
Italian - 18th and early 19th century
Comic opera with everyday settings and local dialects contrasting the formal, aristocratic opera seria.
Originating in Naples (especially the Teatro dei Fiorentini), its popularity spread during the 1730s, notably to Venice where development was influenced by the playwright/librettist Goldoni.
Typically in three acts.
Also referred to as Commedia, Commedia in musica, Commedia per musica, Divertimento giocoso, Dramma bernesco, Dramma comico, Dramma comico per musica. In French called opéra bouffon.

Notable composers: Rossini, Scarlatti, Puccini, Verdi, Vinci, Galuppi, Duni, Piccinni, Sacchini, Salieri, Mozart
Operas
Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) IT - 1786 3*
Don Giovanni (Mozart) IT - 1787 3*
Così fan tutte (Mozart) IT - 1790 3*
Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini) IT - 1816 3*
La Cenerentola (Rossini) IT - 1817 3*
Don Pasquale (Donizetti) IT - 1843 1*
Composers
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) 3*
Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) 3*
Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) 3*
Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842) 1*
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) 1*
Michelangelo Faggioli
Leonardo Vinci (1690-1730)
Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785)
Niccolò Piccinni (1728-1800)
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi (1728-1804)
Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)
Luigi Mosca (1775-1824)
Luigi Ricci (1805-1859)
Gian-Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)
Kirke Mechem (1925-)
Top