Opera semiseria

Opera semiseria is the semi-serious genre of Italian opera that flourished between the 1790s and the 1850s, mixing the pathos of opera seria with the everyday characters and happy endings of opera buffa. Its plots place a virtuous heroine of humble or mysterious birth in peril, move between tears and comedy, and end in recognition and rescue. *Ferdinando Paer*'s "Agnese" fixed the type, and *Gioachino Rossini*'s "La gazza ladra" and *Gaetano Donizetti*'s "Linda di Chamounix" carried it to its widest European success, with the young *Vincenzo Bellini*'s "La sonnambula" as its most durable survivor.