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The ("Quarrel of the Comic Actors"), also known as the ("War of the Comic Actors") and the ("War of the Corners"), was the name given to a battle of rival musical philosophies which took place in Paris between 1752 and 1754. The controversy concerned the relative merits of French and Italian opera. It was sparked by the reaction of literary Paris to a performance of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's short intermezzo ''La serva padrona'' at the Académie royale de musique in Paris on 1 August 1752. ''La serva padrona'' was performed by an itinerant Italian troupe of comic actors, known as ''buffoni'' (''bouffons'' in French, hence the name of the quarrel). The work had already been given in Paris in 1746, but had attracted little notice. This time it provoked a full-scale war of words between the defenders of the French operatic tradition and the champions of Italian music. In the controversy that followed, critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (in the queen's corner) and Friedrich Melchior Grimm, together with other writers associated with the ''Encyclopédie'', praised Italian opera buffa and attacked French lyric tragedy, a style originated by Jean-Baptiste Lully and promoted among then-living composers such as French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau (in the king's corner). ==Culture shock== The quarrel broke out on August 1, 1752, when Eustacchio Bambini's Italian touring company arrived at the Royal Academy of Music (the future Paris Opera) to give performances of intermezzi and opera buffa. They opened with a performance of Pergolesi's ''La serva padrona'' (''The Servant Turned Mistress''). The same work had already been given in Paris in 1746, without attracting any attention at all. The scandal was created by the fact that it was performed at the Royal Academy, which did not have the flexibility of the Comédie-Française where one could alternate tragedies with comedies or the farces of Molière without problem. Comedy at the Royal Academy of Music had always been rather limited. In the eighteenth century, Italian opera evolved greatly, considerably faster than ''tragédie lyrique'' or ''tragédie en musique'' (typically French), until it split into two genres: ''opera seria'' (with serious themes from librettos by Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio) and ''opera buffa'', or comic opera (from ''buffo'' = deriving from "to laugh", "grotesque", "farce”), with comic interludes marked with lightness, innocence, simplicity, irrationality, and the triviality of daily life to theatre. If "comic ballet" could be represented by ''Platée'' (''Plataea''), Rameau's ''tragédie en musique'' (1745), it was already giving way to comic elements (assonances in "oi" imitating the song of frogs, etc.) rather than the genre's elements of parody. The piece was marginal until the outbreak of the quarrel. On the other hand, what one later called ''opéra bouffon'' was not satisfied with parodying the serious genre but producing a type of original comedy, more popular, closer to farce and the ''commedia dell'arte'' (masked comedy). The unexpected successes of these "farces" were going to divide the Parisian intelligentsia into two factions. Between supporters of ''tragédie lyrique'', royal representative of the French style; and sympathizers of ''opéra buffon'', colorful defenders of Italian music, there was born a veritable pamphleteer quarrel which would animate the French capital's musical circles until 1754. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Querelle des Bouffons」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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