Adapting an adaptation: Martin Opitz’s Dafne among the Italians.

In adapting Rinuccini’s Dafne, German poet Martin Opitz (1597–1639) sought to establish a degree of cultural independence from his Italian model, both by developing a prosodic approach uniquely fitted to the German language and by subtly imbuing his text with a German moralistic hue. The later adaptation of Opitz’s libretto by two 17th-century Italians—Giovanni Andrea Bontempi and Marco Gioseppe Peranda—for the same Dresden court (though for a different Elector) that witnessed the 1627 premiere of Opitz and Heinrich Schütz’s Dafne thus offers important insights into both the desire for German cultural independence and the power of Italian influence to moderate such a desire. This article attempts to draw out some of the distinctive features of Opitz’s adaptation and then examine what Bontempi and Peranda retained, added and altered with respect to Opitz’s aims. Their opera points to changing tastes at the Dresden court under Johann Georg II, and, as a stylistic hybrid, also stands as an early exemplar of a particular line of development in the broader history of German opera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]