The culture of opera buffa in Mozart's Vienna

by Mary Kathleen Hunter

Mozart's comic operas are among the masterworks of Western civilization, and yet the musical environment in which Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte wrote these now-popular operas has received little critical attention. In this book, Mary Hunter offers a sweeping, synthetic view of opera buffa in the lively theatrical world of late-eighteenth century Vienna. Opera buffa (Italian-language comic opera) persistently entertained audiences at a time when Joseph II was striving for a German national theater. Hunter attributes opera buffa's success to the "sheer" pleasure it can provide,...

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