The Eighteenth Century: The Age of Enlightenment and the Reform of Opera

The eighteenth century was the century of reason and light: an era in which art, philosophy, and science sought a shared language founded on clarity and harmony. Musical theatre too, after the heroic passions and Arcadian splendor of earlier times, embarked on a profound process of renewal. Opera was no longer merely spectacle or celebration, but became an instrument of moral and civic education. In this climate of reform emerged the figure of Carlo Goldoni, capable of bringing to melodrama the same truth and naturalness he had established on the comic stage.

Carlo Goldoni: From Comic Theatre to Libretti

Although he is remembered primarily as a playwright, Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) also played a significant role as a librettist. Beyond his youthful works, his most important contribution belongs to the golden age of his comic theatre (1748–1763), when he wrote as many as 56 libretti for opera buffa and short comic operas, highly appreciated by contemporary composers.

Goldoni collaborated especially with the Venetian composer Baldassarre Galuppi, who set twenty of his texts to music, including Il mondo della luna and Il filosofo di campagna. His most famous libretto remains La Cecchina, or The Good Daughter, set to music by Niccolò Piccinni, a true masterpiece of Italian opera buffa.

In Goldoni’s libretti we find the same “reform” that renewed his dramaturgy: plots are ingenious and coherent, characters natural and vivid, and the action unfolds with logical clarity. Goldoni succeeded in blending spoken passages, arias, and ensembles with balance, harmoniously combining comic and sentimental elements.

Although at times his versification reflects the speed with which he worked — he liked to say he could write a dramma per musica in just four days — his influence on eighteenth-century musical theatre was decisive: he opened the way to a more human, realistic, and modern stage, paving the road for European opera buffa.

Opera Seria and Opera Buffa: The Split

In the seventeenth century, all operas, regardless of subject, were generally classified as opera seria, even though they often included comic characters and scenes inspired by the Commedia dell’arte.

Eighteenth-century librettists, beginning with Apostolo Zeno, sought to restore classical order, eliminating all comic elements and anything inconsistent with the dignity of drama. This reform was welcomed by audiences and composers alike, leading to a renewed stylistic unity in opera seria.

Comic elements thus found an autonomous home: opera buffa was born. This new genre quickly established itself, conquering an ever wider audience and, by the end of the century, nearly surpassing opera seria in popularity.

Opera Seria: The Mirror of the Eighteenth Century

Opera seria was, for much of the century, simply “opera in music” for Italian and European audiences. It reflected the moral and ideal values of the Enlightenment, an age that exalted virtue, reason, and an Arcadian heroism that was more contemplative than warlike. These ideals were expressed in the characters’ reasoned arguments during recitatives and in the lyrical outpourings of ornate arias.

• Cosmopolitan diffusion: born in Italy, it spread throughout Europe.
• Performance venues: court theatres or major public theatres, with high-level artistic ensembles.
• Plot and structure: almost always in three acts, with solemn or heroic subjects drawn from history or mythology, and ending with a happy conclusion.
• Performers: celebrated singers, particularly high voices (castrati, sopranos, tenors), admired for their virtuosity.
• Musical style: elaborate and dominated by the da capo aria, designed to highlight vocal brilliance.

Two particular forms of opera seria were:

• Pasticcio: an opera with an original libretto but arias drawn from compositions by various authors, often already known.
• Azione or festa teatrale: short operas on mythological subjects composed to celebrate solemn occasions of princes or sovereigns.

The Musical Structure: Recitatives, Arias, and Ensembles

In eighteenth-century opera, the action developed primarily in the recitatives, a form of heightened declamation in which the text progressed freely, without repetition. Recitative served to advance dialogue and plot, leaving the arias to express the characters’ emotions.

• Secco recitative: the most common type, supported solely by the chords of the harpsichord realizing the basso continuo.
• Accompanied (or obbligato) recitative: less frequent, but used in scenes of greater emotional intensity, where the voices were supported by the orchestra, especially the strings. Its dramatic use increased progressively over the course of the century.

Arias represented the moments of greatest musical concentration and captured the audience’s attention. Dramatically, they constituted the lyrical expansion of a character’s feeling after the recitative, while musically they provided the ideal terrain for vocal virtuosity.

The dominant form was the da capo aria (A–B–A), popularized by Alessandro Scarlatti. It articulated emotion into two distinct expressive sections (A and B) and allowed, in the final return of A, ample space for coloratura and improvisation by the singer. Over time, other forms also spread, such as the bipartite or double aria (a slow or moderate movement followed by a faster one).

The need for greater scenic variety and more nuanced psychological contrasts fostered the emergence of ensembles (duets, trios, quartets), which first appeared in opera buffa and later in opera seria as well. Particularly significant were the act and opera finales, highly developed in the second half of the century, where plots reached their musical and dramatic culmination.

The orchestra played an essential role, performing from the beginning (the sinfonia) to the end of the opera, with the sole exception of simple recitatives. At the beginning of the eighteenth century it consisted mainly of strings, but toward the end of the century it expanded to approach the forces of the neoclassical orchestra. In the most advanced masters, such as Niccolò Jommelli, orchestral writing began to assume an independent function, capable of sustaining and enriching dramatic expression.

Opera Buffa: Everyday Life and Simplicity

The term comic opera was later adopted to designate all non-serious operatic genres of the eighteenth century, such as intermezzi, drammi giocosi, or commedie per musica. Among these, the intermezzo was one of the most original forms: a short composition in two parts, performed during the intervals of an opera seria. Its plots, light and brilliant in tone, were inspired by everyday life among the middle and lower classes, involving only a few characters — usually two or three —, assigned to soprano and bass voices. The masterpiece of the genre is La serva padrona (1733) by Giovan Battista Pergolesi.

Opera buffa, a typically Italian product rooted above all in Naples, displayed several distinctive features:

• Performance: staged in smaller theatres, with limited scenic resources.
• Plot and characters: stories inspired by everyday life, featuring protagonists from the middle or popular classes; the use of the Neapolitan dialect was not uncommon.
• Performers: versatile singer-actors, capable of combining lively acting with expressive singing.
• Vocal style: fluid and cantabile, more concerned with naturalness than virtuosity, reflecting an ironic and affectionate observation of bourgeois manners.

Enlightenment philosophers and French encyclopedists admired the simplicity and spontaneity of Italian opera buffa, seeing in it an alternative model to the solemnity and rigidity of opera seria.

Naples: A Forge of Masters and Reformers

The success of the Neapolitan school was consolidated thanks to masters such as Nicola Porpora, Francesco Feo, Leonardo Vinci, Leonardo Leo and, later, Giacomo Tritto and Fedele Fenaroli, active in the Conservatories. Despite the political upheavals that marked the century — from Spanish to Austrian rule and finally the Bourbons —, musical theatre flourished without interruption. The construction of the Teatro San Carlo in 1737 confirmed Naples’ central role, providing opera seria with the largest and most prestigious venue in Europe.

Giovan Battista Pergolesi: Sweetness and Reform (1710–1736)

Despite his short life, Giovan Battista Pergolesi occupies a prominent place in the history of opera. A pupil of Francesco Durante in Naples, he approached the theatre at a very young age and achieved posthumous fame when, in 1752 in Paris, his intermezzo La serva padrona (originally inserted between the acts of the opera seria Il prigioniero superbo) sparked the famous querelle des bouffons.

The French public discovered in it a new kind of music: lively, communicative, and refined, so much so that many works not his own were attributed to him. His melodies, characterized by sweetness and melancholy, stand out for their simplicity and formal concentration, exalting the nobility of melodic expression.

In the comic genre, Pergolesi skillfully portrayed the psychology of his characters and their relationships, oscillating between realism, irony, and sentiment. In addition to theatrical titles such as Lo frate ’nnamorato and L’Olimpiade, he left us the celebrated Stabat Mater, a testament to his melodic and spiritual sensitivity.

The Generation of Reformers

Throughout the eighteenth century, Naples remained one of the undisputed capitals of musical theatre, a hub for the diffusion of Italian opera across Europe. The later generations of Neapolitan opera composers produced internationally prominent figures such as Niccolò Jommelli, Tommaso Traetta, Niccolò Piccinni, Giovanni Paisiello, and Domenico Cimarosa. Many of them worked abroad for long periods, in cities such as Stuttgart, Vienna, and St Petersburg, carrying with them the Neapolitan melodic tradition and contributing to the reform of European musical theatre.

• Niccolò Jommelli (1714–1774), active mainly in Stuttgart, sought a synthesis between Metastasian drama and French opera, introducing choruses, dances, and ensemble numbers. With an excellent orchestra at his disposal, he gave great importance to instrumental sections and orchestral accompaniment, making them an integral part of the dramaturgy.
• Tommaso Traetta (1727–1779), working in Parma, was influenced by the Enlightenment climate and became a leading advocate of a true reform of opera, integrating structural elements from French opera in the tradition of Rameau. In his operas, especially those written for Vienna (such as Armida and Ifigenia in Tauride), he strengthened scenic action by reinforcing recitatives and introducing choruses and dances as expressive and symbolic moments.

The “Réunion des Goûts” in France

The renewal of cultural ties between France and Italy encouraged a new French curiosity toward Italian music—especially Corelli’s sonatas and Bononcini’s cantatas. In this climate the concept of the “réunion des goûts” emerged, meaning the fusion of tastes between French and Italian styles, in an attempt to combine elegance and clarity with expressive warmth and melodic vitality.

A musician who embodied this ideal was François Couperin, the author of two famous Apothéoses dedicated to Lully and Corelli, in which he celebrated the symbolic encounter of the two worlds. However, this openness toward Italian art did not occur without friction: it fueled an intense aesthetic controversy between defenders of French tradition, associated with balance and restraint, and admirers of the Italian style, more passionate and virtuosic.

The Enlightenment and the Concert Revolution

The Concerto: Contrast and Alternation

The word concerto evokes two complementary ideas: “to bind together” and “to contend with”. This double etymology perfectly expresses its essence: a musical form founded on the dialectic between union and opposition.

In the eighteenth century, in the full Age of Enlightenment, the concerto had by then completely detached itself from the vocal concerto of the early seventeenth century. The concerto became a purely instrumental form, based on the contrast between two groups: the Solo (or Concertino, made up of a few performers) and the Tutti (or Concerto grosso/Ripieno, the full orchestra). These two groups alternated or conversed, creating a dynamic balance between collective participation and individual virtuosity.

A decisive step in the concerto’s evolution was its emancipation from counterpoint, typical of trio sonatas. This advance became possible thanks to formal innovations such as the ritornello structure (alternation of Tutti–Solo sections), the thematic function of the ritornello entrusted to the Tutti, and the use of melodic sequences and echo repetitions that increased architectural clarity.

The Origin of Contrast

The founding idea of the concerto—the continuous alternation between episodes played by many (Tutti or Ripieno) and those entrusted to a few (Concertino or Soloist)— probably arose from the church trio sonata. In liturgical performances, it was in fact customary to alternate solo playing with that of the full ensemble, amplifying the spatial and sonic effect.

From this practice emerged the concerto grosso, whose name appeared for the first time in 1689. The inventor of the contrast effect between Concertino and Tutti is considered to be Alessandro Stradella, who between 1670 and 1680 grasped the expressive power of simply doubling the parts of a trio sonata with an orchestral reinforcement, giving rise to one of the most emblematic structures of music in the Age of Enlightenment.

Corelli and the Concerto Grosso

It was within the cultural milieu of Arcadia that the concerto found its definitive form. Arcangelo Corelli performed his Concerti grossi publicly in Rome as early as 1681–1682, but his twelve masterpieces, collected as Op. 6, were published only after his death.

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These concertos represent the initial and purest phase of the form. Like the sonatas of the same composer, they were divided into Church Concertos and Chamber Concertos, structured in four or six movements. The Concertino consisted of two violins and a cello, which entered into dialogue with the orchestral Ripieno in a refined interplay of balance and contrast. Corelli’s music is often described as “choral” for its constant search for harmony between melody and counterpoint, a synthesis of architectural rigor and classical proportion.

From the Concerto Grosso to the Solo Concerto

If the concerto grosso was born in Rome, the solo concerto took its first steps in Bologna, in the chapel of San Petronio, before achieving definitive success in Venice. Its initiator was Giuseppe Torelli, author of the Concerti musicali Op. 6 (1698), which laid the foundations of the new form.

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The distinction between concerto grosso and solo concerto was not, however, clear-cut. In the former, the small group (Concertino) tends to blend with the Tutti; in the latter, the Soloist stands out in sharper opposition to the full orchestra. At the time, terminology was fluid and often interchangeable, yet the essence remained the same: contrast, alternation, and dialogue between sound masses.

The concerto grosso enjoyed great success in the first half of the eighteenth century, before gradually declining. Corelli’s disciples, such as Francesco Geminiani and Pietro Antonio Locatelli — both active abroad — remained faithful to his model, while the Venetian masters Tommaso Albinoni and Alessandro Marcello introduced original solutions and a more lyrical and melodic taste, preparing the ground for the full affirmation of the solo concerto.

Antonio Vivaldi and the Model of the Solo Concerto

The first composer to define systematically the features of the solo concerto was the Veronese Giuseppe Torelli, whose works established the structural relationship between the Tutti (serving as the ritornello) and the solo episodes (which introduce modulations and thematic variety).

This structure — based on the alternation Ritornello → Solo → Ritornello — was later perfected and made universal by Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741), who composed around 450 concertos, becoming the true codifier of the form.

The Vivaldian Form

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the solo concerto was definitively established in a three-movement structure: Fast – Slow – Fast. The contrast between Tutti and Solo was reserved for the outer movements, while the central movement, slow and cantabile, assumed the role of a lyrical and expressive moment.

The form adopted by Vivaldi is distinguished by its tonal clarity and architectural solidity. It is based on the alternation of four Ritornellos (in the tonic, dominant, and related keys) and three Solo sections, in which technical virtuosity and harmonic modulation are concentrated. The ritornellos, always energetic and recognizable, function as structural reference points, while the solos develop material derived from the same motives as the ritornello, creating a continuous and coherent dialogue.

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The central slow movement is entirely entrusted to the cantabile quality of the solo instrument, accompanied in a restrained manner, often only by the basso continuo. In these sections lies Vivaldi’s poetic vein, where melody becomes pure expressive affection.

Unlike other Italian composers of his time, Vivaldi greatly expanded the concerto’s timbral palette, writing not only for violin, but also for cello, viola d’amore, flute, oboe, bassoon, mandolin and many other instruments. This variety makes his output unique and marks a decisive step toward the modern conception of the orchestra.

Successors and Influences

The instrumental music of Antonio Vivaldi, renowned for its inventive freshness and rhythmic vitality, earned him fame and admiration throughout Europe. His personal language and the dramatic energy generated by the constant contrast between soloist and orchestra introduced an entirely new dynamism into instrumental music.

Italian Successors

After Vivaldi, the Italian concerto tradition continued with two central figures:

• Pietro Antonio Locatelli (1695–1764), who settled in Amsterdam, was the author of L’arte del violino (1733), a collection of concertos including 24 virtuosic cadenzas (Capricci), representing the pinnacle of violin technique of the time and a landmark in instrumental pedagogy.
• Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770), active in Padua, developed a more lyrical and reflective style. While beginning from the Vivaldian model, his writing evolved toward a freer and more cantabile form, anticipating the outlines of the future neoclassical symphony.

The Concerto in Europe

Although born in Italy, the solo concerto found its widest diffusion in Germany, where court chapels and collegia musica flourished, formed by professional and amateur instrumentalists. Vivaldi’s influence was direct and profound in Saxony and on the leading German masters, including Bach, who studied and transcribed numerous concertos by him. The growing passion for virtuosity fostered an ever-expanding repertoire, leaving room for improvisation and ornamentation on the part of soloists.

In France, the success of the Piedmontese Giovanni Battista Somis, a pupil of Corelli, opened the way to the taste for the Italian concerto. In England, the genre arrived later, especially in the form of the concerto for organ or harpsichord and strings, a field in which Giuseppe Sammartini distinguished himself.

Music for Keyboard Instruments

During the eighteenth century, the production of harpsichord music increased throughout Europe, while that for the organ declined, as sacred music increasingly turned toward vocal forms, leaving the organ largely in the role of simple basso continuo.

In Italy, the tradition inherited from Frescobaldi and Pasquini remained alive, namely the practice of gathering in the same volume pieces for organ and harpsichord. Abroad, however, editions tended to distinguish them clearly. The most common forms for the harpsichord were the suite and the sonata, often constructed in binary ritornello form (departure toward the dominant and return to the tonic). The rondeau (scheme A–B–A–C–A) also spread, particularly appreciated by the French.

Among Italian keyboard composers we may recall Domenico Zipoli, Della Ciaja, Padre Martini, Francesco Durante, and the inventor of the Alberti bass, Domenico Alberti. Yet the figure who towers above all is Domenico Scarlatti, an absolute and unclassifiable genius of the European harpsichord.

Domenico Scarlatti: The Archipelago of Sonatas

Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757), son of Alessandro and a contemporary of Bach and Handel, began, like many Italian masters, with a regular career as maestro di cappella. The turning point came in 1720, when he moved to Portugal as a court teacher. In 1729 he followed his pupil, the Infanta Maria Barbara, to Spain, where he remained until his death.

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It was during this long Madrid period that he composed his masterpiece: around 550 harpsichord sonatas, almost all in a single movement. Most of them remained unknown to the public, circulating only in court manuscripts, and were rediscovered only at the end of the nineteenth century.

The sonatas, with the exception of a few fugues or rondeaux, follow the binary scheme tonic/dominant – dominant/tonic, but Scarlatti renews it with inexhaustible genius:

• Thematic material: brief, incisive motives, arranged in clear and varied sequences.
• Harmonic mobility: a rich play of modulations, even into distant keys, always returning to the tonic.
• Staggering technique: two-voice writing, yet full of repeated notes, wide leaps, hand crossings, arpeggios, and echo effects.

His unmistakable style, with no true successors, also grew out of his long isolation from Europe’s main musical centers. Scarlatti translated into the harpsichord’s language rhythms, scales, and inflections from Spanish folk music, transforming guitar gestures into keyboard phrasing. The result was a unified, lively, and brilliant idiom where fantasy, elegance, and irony coexist: music that, for the harpsichord, is worth as much as Chopin’s is for the piano.