Music TheoryPrint

BU

Burletta

In theater and music history, a burletta (Italian, meaning "little joke", sometimes burla or burlettina) is a brief comic opera. In eighteenth-century Italy, a burletta was the comic intermezzo

List of theatrical Burlettas#

  • Midas by Kane O’Hara (Belfast, 1760, Dublin, 1762)
  • Orpheus by François-Hippolyte Barthélémon (London, 1767)
  • The Judgement of Paris by Barthélémon (London, 1768)
  • The Recruiting Serjeant by Charles Dibdin (London, 1770)
  • The Portrait by Samuel Arnold (1770)
  • The Portrait by Barthélémon (Dublin, c. 1771)
  • L’infedeltà delusa by Joseph Haydn (1773)
  • The Golden Pippin by John Abraham Fisher (1773)
  • Buxom Joan by Raynor Taylor (1778)
  • Poor Vulcan by Dibdin (1778)
  • Marie Tanner, words by Broughton Black and Poland Henry, music by John Ivimey (produced at Cardiff, 1897)
  • Tom and Jerry, or Life in London by W. T. Moncrieff (1821)

Other Meanings#

The word burletta has also been used for scherzo-like instrumental music by composers including Max Reger and Bartók. In America, the word has sometimes been used as an alternative for burlesque.

Genre family
Comedy genres, Opera genres