ABSTRACT
Italian opera had changed quite a bit even during Monteverdi's lifetime, and it continued to evolve as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries progressed. Many operas eliminated comic scenes, believing that they were detrimental to the majestic and heroic qualities that could be expressed in a well-written opera. The resulting genre was called opera seria. For much of the eighteenth century, opera seria—with its emphasis on vocal virtuosity—was the queen of the Italian genres. Like a stubborn weed, however, humor was impossible to abolish from the Italian musical stage completely. One manifestation was the genre called the intermezzo. An intermezzo was a comic interlude presented between the acts of an opera seria. Mozart's librettist was Lorenzo da Ponte, and Don Giovanni was their second collaboration, after they had triumphed in 1786 with an opera buffa titled The Marriage of Figaro.
