Pergolesi was one of the most important early composers of opera buffa (comic opera). His opera seria, Il prigionier superbo, contained the two act buffa intermezzo, La Serva Padrona (The Servant Mistress, 28 August 1733), which became a very popular work in its own right. When it was performed in Paris in 1752, it prompted the so-called Querelle des Bouffons (“quarrel of the comic actors”) between supporters of serious French opera by the likes of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Jean-Philippe Rameau and supporters of new Italian comic opera. Pergolesi was held up as a model of the Italian style during this quarrel, which divided Paris’s musical community for two years.
Pergolesi also wrote sacred music, including a Mass in F and his Magnificat in C major. It is his Stabat Mater (1736), however, for male soprano, male alto, string orchestra and basso continuo, which is his best known sacred work. It was commissioned by the Confraternità dei Cavalieri di San Luigi di Palazzo. It has erroneously been said that it was commissioned by an order of monks. Rather, a group of pious and charitable gentlemen, such as existed in cities all over Italy, commissioned the work. It was this group that presented an annual Good Friday meditation in honor of the Virgin Mary; Pergolesi’s work replaced one composed for the same forces by Alessandro Scarlatti only nine years before, but which was already perceived as “old-fashioned,” so rapidly had public tastes changed.
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