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Music Theatre and the Holy Roman Empire Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 June 2022
Turning to the genre that was included in the repertoire of nearly every company, this chapter explores melodrama. Featuring only a select few performers, melodramas were showpieces for the finest dramatic actors and vehicles for their fame. The genre spread rapidly throughout the Empire, and although some recognized the role of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) in melodrama's inception, it was eventually labelled ‘Germany’s daughter’. The success of Ariadne auf Naxos (Gotha, 1775) by Georg Benda (1722–95) led to an intense period of melodramatic reform. This chapter traces this reform movement through such pieces as Sophonisbe (Leipzig, 1776) by Christian Gottlob Neefe (1748–98), Benda’s Philon und Theone (Vienna, 1779), and Zelmor und Ermide (Vienna, c.1779) by Anton Zimmermann (1741–81). Arguing that such pieces as these pushed melodrama's generic boundaries to the verge of opera and imparted instrumental music with new aesthetic powers, this chapter offers new insight into music-text relations, generic hybridity, and melodrama's aesthetic entanglements with opera and symphonic music.
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