Querelle des Bouffons

The Querelle des Bouffons ("Quarrel of the Comic Actors"), also known as the Guerre des Bouffons ("War of the Comic Actors"), was the name given to a battle of musical philosophies that took place in Paris between 1752 and 1754. The controversy concerned the relative merits of French and Italian opera. It was also known as the Guerre des Coins ("War of the Corners"), with those favoring French opera in the King's corner, and those favoring Italian opera in the Queen's corner.

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). In the controversy that followed, critics such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich Melchior Grimm, along with other writers associated with the Encyclopédie, praised Italian opera buffa. They attacked French lyric tragedy, a style originated by Jean-Baptiste Lully and promoted by such French composers as Jean-Philippe Rameau.

In France in the middle of the eighteenth century, the genre of "comic ballet" (such as Rameau's Platée) was starting to acquire comic elements, while the genre of opéra bouffon was starting to produce a type of original comedy that was closer to farce and commedia dell'arte. Comedy at the Royal Academy of Music (Académie royale de musique, the future Paris Opera) was usually limited to tragédie lyrique or tragédie en musique. For something light, audiences went to the Comédie-Française, which would alternate tragedies with comedies and the farces of Molière.

In Italy, this evolution proceeded more rapidly, until opera split into two distinct genres. One of the genres was "serious opera" (opera seria) with serious themes from librettos by Apostolo Zeno and Metastasio. The other was comic opera (opera buffa, from buffo— "to laugh", "grotesque", "farce”) with comic interludes marked with lightness, innocence, simplicity, irrationality, and the triviality of daily life.

It was against this background that the arrival, in 1752, of La serva padrona at the Royal Academy of Music triggered a culture war among Parisian intelligentsia.

The quarrel broke out on August 1, 1752, when Eustacchio Bambini's Italian touring company arrived in Paris to give performances of intermezzi and opera buffa. They opened with a performance of Pergolesi's La serva padrona (The Servant Turned Mistress). This work had been given in Paris before (in 1746) without attracting any attention. But this time it was performed at the Royal Academy of Music and it created a scandal. People were shocked, and supporters of French tragédie lyrique squared off against supporters of Italian opéra bouffon in a dispute carried out through the medium of pamphlets.

In 1753 Jean-Jacques Rousseau published a pamphlet (Letter on French Music), boosting La serva; and at the end of the year, he published it in an engraved edition to disseminate an uncorrupted text. Both versions would weigh heavily in the reception of the work.

After praising Italian music, he harshly condemned the French.