During the seventeenth-century Naples was largely content to follow the capital of the operatic world, Venice. The first operas to be seen in Naples, one of which may have been Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (there is some dispute on the matter), were mostly imported from Venice in the early 1650s, a pattern that was to be largely followed for most of the remainder of the century. By the mid-1650s ‘Febi Armonici’, an operatic troupe who had been encouraged to move from Rome to Naples by the Spanish viceroy of Naples, were presenting opera at the S. Bartolomeo theatre, an innovation succeeded by various companies who acted on its stage until 1737, when the theatre was pulled down.

A semi-improvised theatrical entertainment, the commedia dell’arte first became popular in the early part of the sixteenth century. Its essence lay in the skill of masked professional actors in stock roles to improvise within a predetermined scenario.

There can be little doubt that the true founder of Neapolitan opera was not Alessandro Scarlatti, as has sometimes been claimed, but Francesco Provenzale (c1626-1704). Provenzale’s earliest operas date from the 1650s and the likelihood that they were at least in part adapted from operas by Cavalli only emphasizes the close interaction between Venetian and Neapolitan opera during this period. Provenzale’s activities as an opera composer were curtailed by the arrival of Scarlatti in Naples, the latter’s appointment as maestro di capella in 1684 causing the disappointed Provenzale to resign his post in a protest that also resulted in a number of other members of the chapel choir leaving the establishment. However, as will later be seen, Provenzale is an important figure in the move toward the creation of comic opera.

The ‘commedia dell’arte’ and ‘commedia erudita’

Only an accident of history has deprived us of a work that might have changed the history of comic opera. In 1627 an opera entitled La finta pazza Licori was proposed for the court of Mantua. The composer was none other than Claudio Monteverdi, the librettist the renowned Giulio Strozzi. Sadly, neither text nor music survives, and it seems likely that since there is no record of it having been performed, the work was never completed. We are left, tantalizing, with only the composer’s reference to it in a letter as a “thousand ridiculous little inventions”. Yet the title alone is revealing, for the words ‘finta’ (feign or bogus) and ‘pazza’ (mad) are both closely associated with what would become stock ingredients of comedy in opera and, ultimately, comic opera itself. Both feigning and comic madness have their roots in the most significant of all influences on comic opera, the commedia dell’arte.

A semi-improvised theatrical entertainment, the commedia dell’arte first became popular in the early part of the sixteenth-century. Its essence lay in the skill of masked professional actors in stock roles to improvise within a predetermined scenario. These stock characters were associated with various regions of Italy, including Naples, frequently speaking in local dialect not fully understood by other members of the cast, thus creating the confusion and misunderstandings central to the development of the plot. As we will see, the use of local dialect would become one of the defining characteristics of Neapolitan comic opera. Confusion and imbroglio was also created by the frequent employment of gender role reversal, another feature that would be incorporated into many a comic opera.

Because many of the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte found their way in recognizable form into comic opera, it will be helpful to identify them. Essential was at least one pair of young lovers, who appeared unmasked. Their trials and tribulations before achieving a happy union were assisted by ziani, scheming and quick-witted male servant types of whom Arlecchino is the best-known example. Mozart and Rossini’s Figaro is a famous descendent. Opposing the lovers and often a father or guardian of one of them was a foolish old man, frequently a doctor or lawyer (the prototype of Figaro’s adversary, Dr Bartolo) who is the butt for the mockery and tricks of other cast members. The paradigm of such characters was Pantalone, who can also frequently be found foolishly courting a much younger girl from a lower social order, often a servant or peasant. Her most famous manifestation in the commedia dell’arte is Columbina, an exemplar who combines a mixture of sentimentality, charm and knowing pertness with an element of the shrewish. Comic opera’s adoption of the Pantalone and Columbina archetypes represents one its mainstays, their counterparts immediately recognisable in the most famous of all early Neapolitan comic pieces, Pergolesi’s La serva padrona.