Querelle des Bouffons

The Querelle des Bouffons ("Quarrel of the Comic Actors"), also known as the Guerre des Bouffons ("War of the Comic Actors") and the Guerre des Coins ("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).

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.

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