Abstract
The article brings to light Sforza Oddi's little-known commedie gravi or 'serious' comedies which, I suggest, are representative of the dramatic innovations that took place in Italy during the second half of the Cinquecento and prior to the 'birth' of opera in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Drawing on similarities of style, form, content, and gender-related issues, I argue here that a number of theatrical devices already present in scripted comedy such as the soliloquy and lament forms, together with rather pronounced melodramatic patterns of speech, served to pave the way for sung drama, specifically, through their use by the prime donne of early opera.
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