ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a critical narrative analysis of the title role. A Catholic audience could have interpreted this role as a parable for Jesus—adored in Catholic liturgy as king, judge, and savior. Such an interpretation would have been evoked by the praise of Tito’s virtuous character, his goodness, generosity, and ability to set the common good over his own needs. Tito enters the stage in baroque fashion as God’s representative on earth and consistently appears as a benevolent ruler. When Tito finally quotes Exodus 3:14, it suggests that his unchanging mercy reflects God’s self-same oneness. Tito’s unswerving commitment to clemency could have appeared to support Beccaria’s program of punishment reform. The audience also might have heard in the opera an emphasis on God’s mercy amidst the final reckoning with human sin. Such an interpretation points to the changed theological image of God in the age of sensibility, with its dual emphasis on the ever-loving Father and the meek Jesus adored through the pious image of the Sacred Heart.
