ABSTRACT
Morality, decorum, and didacticism have been important aspects of opera since the genre’s beginning in the late sixteenth century. Even from the earliest operatic works based on the Orpheus myth, individual characters and groups of characters turn to the audience to deliver instructional reflections drawn out of onstage occurrences; for instance, the chorus of spirits in the scene where Orpheus loses Eurydice for the second time in Act IV of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, promoting the humanistic ideal of rational self-control of one’s passions.1 These earliest works also show that the text and music of operas as well as their performed content often depended on the standards of decorum and propriety at the performance locale. Many early operas, for example, used castrati in female roles because it was considered immoral for women to publicly appear on the stage.2 Similarly, early operatic adaptations of the Orpheus myth replaced the gruesome and tragic endings of the story that appeared in Virgil and Ovid with more pleasing and educational ones.3 Many librettists and composers of the Italian Baroque therefore focused on two kinds of moralistic concerns: didactic instruction-i.e., the promotion of what was considered positive patterns of behavior-and restrictive propriety-i.e., the excision of any content deemed inappropriate for an audience’s moral well-being. This emphasis on morality remained an important feature of musical theater for at least the next two centuries, but it became particularly prominent in certain German-language operas produced in Vienna in the late eighteenth century. This monograph explores the social, cultural, and political background of the intensely moralistic Viennese German opera tradition, and follows its development throughout the last two decades of the eighteenth century.
