Querelle des Bouffons

The Querelle des Bouffons (English: War of the Comic Actors) was the name given to a battle of musical philosophies in France which took place 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 opera buffa La serva padrona at the Académie royale de musique in Paris on August 1 1752. Pergolesi's work was performed between the acts of Acis et Galatée by Jean Baptiste Lully, the founder of the French operatic tradition. 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 which followed critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Melchior Grimm, together with other writers associated with the Encyclopédie praised Italian opera buffa and compared it favourably to French lyric tragedy, a style originated by Lully and promoted among then-living composers such as French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau.

Sources

• Girdlestone, Cuthbert,Jean-Philippe Rameau: His Life and Work, New York: Dover Publications, 1969 ISBN 0486214168
• Parker, Roger C. (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera New York: Oxford University Press, 1994 ISBN 0198162820

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