"Colla virtù per guida, colla ragione alfianco" : gibt es eine ernstzunehmende Rezeption der Stoa in der Oper des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts? : mit einem Blick auf die Geschichte des Oratoriums Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts

Although ancient myths after the middle ages no longer needed to be interpreted from a Christian perspective they nevertheless had to be compatible with Christianity, and so it was only logical that Stoic values, especially those of the later Stoa and above all Seneca, were of importance in the early history of opera, since these were generally considered to be close to Christian ones, though it may not have been a question of deliberate philosophical copying. This philosophical influenae was facilitated by the greater role accorded to the libretto after the reign of Neapolitan opera. It was above all the motif of the affects and the struggle against them which grew to be a central theme of Opera seria, whose development was to a great extent shaped by the librettist Metastasio who contrasted virtue and vice with one another. The role of a ruler or nobleman was often used to represent virtue, and the relationship between regal authority and regal virtue can itself be seen in the person of Seneca, who as a Stoic philosopher still had to bend to the realities of the court. In the history of the oratorio one may trace a developmentfrom a Judeo-Christian stoicism to one less firmly rooted in concrete religious motifs.