La serva padrona
The "Querelle des Bouffons" (1752–54), a quarrel between advocates of French and Italian music, was a major turning-point for "opéra comique". Members of the pro-Italian faction, such as the philosopher and musician Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attacked serious French opera, represented by the "tragédies en musique" of Jean-Philippe Rameau, in favor of what they saw as the simplicity and "naturalness" of Italian comic opera (opera buffa), exemplified by Pergolesi's "La serva padrona", which had recently been performed in Paris by a traveling Italian troupe. In 1752, Rousseau produced a short opera influenced by Pergolesi, "Le Devin du village", in an attempt to introduce his ideas of musical simplicity and naturalness to France. Its success attracted the attention of the Foire theatres. The next year, the head of the Saint Laurent theatre, Jean Monnet, commissioned the composer Antoine Dauvergne to produce a French opera in the style of "La serva padrona". The result was "Les troqueurs", which Monnet passed off as the work of an Italian composer living in Vienna who was fluent in French, thus fooling the partisans of Italian music into giving it a warm welcome. Dauvergne's opera, with a simple plot, everyday characters, and Italianate melodies, had a huge influence on subsequent "opéra comique", setting a fashion for composing new music, rather than recycling old tunes. Where it differed from later "opéras comiques", however, was that it contained no spoken dialogue. In this, Dauvergne was following the example of Pergolesi's "La serva padrona".