Irmgard Scheitler

Martin Opitz und Heinrich Schütz:

Dafne – ein Schauspiel

A handful of letters and a few archival documents are the only extant sources to assist in determining the genre classification of Dafne (1627). This dearth of information led to various conjectures and opposing conclusions among musicologists and German philologists. The latter categorize Dafne as an opera, relying on Opitz’s use of recitative or free-madrigal verse to support their argument. However, in the seventeenth century numerous spoken dramas also used this type of verse. Before ca. 1680 a connection was not necessarily made between stilo recitativo and madrigal texts; various types of verse were employed in operatic works, in concert music even prose. Originally Dafne was not considered an opera. Gottsched was the first to maintain otherwise. The only known second performance in the seventeenth century was a spoken drama, and its choral parts have survived.

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