ABSTRACT
Opera buffa sprang to life in Italy during the middle third of the eighteenth century. Its first phase played mainly on the stages of Naples and Rome, followed by those of Venice, where Carlo Goldoni put his indelible stamp on the process. By 1760 Goldonian opera buffa had spread far and wide, triumphing in many operatic centers, but not in Vienna. Goldoni left Venice for Paris in the fall of 1762; he continued to write for the Venetian theatres, although he was never to return to his native city. In the fall of 1763, Goldoni wrote to his friend Gabriele Cornet in Venice asking for news about the outcome of a new dramma serio-giocoso in musica that had reopened the Teatro San Cassiano on 5 November 1763. According to Goldoni, buffo music existed before opera buffa, in the comic parts of older works from the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
