Crossword-Solution: INTERMEZZOS 11 letters, 2 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 31

Such intermixtures, therefore, destroy all tragic impression, but to the comic tone these intentional interruptions or intermezzos are welcome, even though they be in themselves more serious than the subject of the representation, because we are at such times unwilling to submit to the constraint of a mental occupation which must perforce be kept up, for then it would assume the appearance of a task or obligation.

All this he employed, with more or less success, in the exigency of the moment, and also in order to deck out his drama in a sprightly and variegated dress, made use of all manner of means, however foreign to his art: such as the allegorical opening scenes of the opera prologues, musical intermezzos, in which he even introduced Italian and Spanish national music, with texts in their own language; ballets, at one time sumptuous and at another grotesque; and even sometimes mere vaulting and capering.

But even in the farces, with or without ballets, and intermezzos, in which the overcharged, and frequently the self-conscious and arbitrary comic of buffoonery prevails, Moličre has exhibited an inexhaustible store of excellent humour, scattered capital jokes with a lavish hand, and drawn the most amusing caricatures with a bold and vigorous pencil.

The performance of one of these quasi-historical dramas sometimes lasts over several days; they are produced with much pomp of costume; but the acting is very realistic, and _hari-kari_ is performed, almost "to the life." Besides these tragic plays (in which, however, comic _intermezzos_ are often inserted) the Japanese have middle-class domestic dramas of a very realistic kind.

Fairy and demon operas and ballets, and farces and _intermezzos_, form an easy transition to the interludes of tumblers and jugglers.