intermezzo, in music and theatre, an entertainment performed between the acts of a play; also a light instrumental composition. In the late 15th and 16th centuries, classical and contemporary plays were performed with intermezzi written by the finest composers of the time and consisting of solo songs, madrigals and other part-songs, dance, and, occasionally, spoken dialogue. In subject matter, they were often allegorical or pastoral.
By 1600 the intermezzi were frequently elaborate spectacles that attracted more attention than the play. In Italy, opera evolved within the framework of the intermezzo. Comic intermezzi were performed between the acts of 17th- and 18th-century serious operas. Usually for soprano and bass, and sung throughout, they gave rise to opera buffa, the characteristic Italian form of comic opera. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi’s famous and influential opera buffa, La serva padrona (1733; The Maid as Mistress), was originally a series of intermezzi performed between the acts of his serious opera Il prigionier superbo (The Haughty Prisoner).
In the 19th century, “intermezzo” was often used as a title for light instrumental pieces, such as the piano intermezzi composed by Franz Schubert and Johannes Brahms. A well-known example is the orchestral intermezzo in Pietro Mascagni’s one-act opera Cavalleria rusticana (1889; Rustic Chivalry), which forms an interlude between the opera’s two sections.