The tenor part was usually the sentimental, unhappy lover, and required most from the singer, but there were often two tenor parts, in which case one was comic; the buffo tenor was not however nearly so well defined a part as the buffo bass. The bass parts were decidedly comic; a blustering old man and a cunning or a stupid servant were seldom wanting. When the lover was a bass, he was either jovial or comical. In spite of all this freedom, certain typical features were formed that recur in all the varieties of grouping and disguise. The opera buffa was far from adopting in dialect or costume the well-defined character, of the Italian popular comedy, but the resemblance in form is unmistakable. It was in imitation of the popular plays that the comic parts were made caricatures, the effect of which depended on striking but exaggerated peculiarities. The music was made to display these,[8] and there can be no doubt that the want of individual character in the opera seria favoured the passage to the opposite extreme in the opera buffa. As a relief to the caricatures, _mezzo carattere_ were invented, in which the purely musical element was more pronounced. Intermezzi required an easy and loosely connected plot; the popular jokes would not have come out so well from a studied, well-connected drama, as from effective situations where favourite characters could follow their bent. If the situations were of ample variety, lively and humorous in their rendering, the audience was quite ready to forget how weak the thread was which held them together. The opera buffa was always written for a specified company, and the {FORMS OF OPERA BUFFA.} (207) poet, limited both as to characters and effective situations, found his labour simplified by such a skilful use of the conditions ready to hand as should secure him applause and success.[9] Opera buffa, being held in little esteem, was seldom taken in hand by poets of note; even Goldoni's texts are, as he acknowledges himself,[10] unworthy of esteem. Goethe,[11] when he was studying the comic opera in Rome with the composer Kayser, remarked, that "there were a hundred things to be observed, to which the Italians sacrificed the spirit of the poetry; for instance, each character was to be brought forward in a certain order and a certain degree--each singer must have pauses, &C."[12] His own experience gave him a very just judgment on opera texts, and he rightly ascribed a certain amount of simplicity, which, apart from the music, made them appear poor and meagre, to a tendency to treat the subject fancifully, like a child's fairy story.[13] But the majority of comic libretti are disconnected and absurd, without spirit or delicacy, depending entirely on the effect of humorous exaggeration; and the universal opinion was a just one, that the words of the comic opera were as poor as the music was charming.[14]