The origins of the Roman intermezzo, an important and influential sub-genre of Italian comic opera, can be traced back to the 1730s, when the composer and librettist Benedetto Micheli wrote several two-part intermezzi for the Teatro Valle and other theaters in Rome for performance during the intermissions of spoken plays. The Valle cultivated the intermezzo with particular consistency during the next six decades, presenting works by many distinguished composers, including Sacchini, Paisiello, and Cimarosa. Sacchini's La contadina in corte, on a libretto derived from Giacomo Rust's three-act comic opera of the same title, may serve as a good example of the Roman intermezzo.