The Bellerofonte — Bellérophon tradition and Barthold Feind’s libretto Bellerophon — Das in die Preussische Krone verwandelte Wagen-Gestirn for Christoph Graupner (1708)

Abstract

The chronicled history of the “Bellérophon / Bellerofonte” as an operatic scenario appears to have its point of departure in 1642 when a production of the drama musicale 77 Bellerofonte to a libretto by Vincenzo Nolfi and in a musical setting of Francesco Sacrati (1605–1650) was produced at the Teatro Novissimo (built 1641) in Venice during the Carnival of that year. Sacrati’s considerable reputation both among musicians as well as dynastic patrons was such that the scenographer Giacomo Torelli (1608–1678) could produce his earlier opera La finta pazza in 1645 at Paris, with the choreographer G. B. Balbi (fi. 1636–1657), becoming the first Italian opera to have been performed publicly in France¹. Torelli’s stage design for the final scene of Sacrati’s Bellerofonte has often been identified as the starting point for architectural visions of operatic production in the late Baroque period².