After the Aeneid

This chapter looks at three eighteenth-century operas on the topic of Ascanius: Fux’s Julo Ascanio, re d’Alba (1708), Lotti’s Ascanio, ovvero Gli odi delusi dal sangue (1718), and Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba (1772). It shows that the story of Ascanius has cultural cachet and authority because of its origin in the respected classical texts of Virgil and Livy, and that it provides elevated subject matter appropriate for operas on great state occasions; this classical episode is conveniently flexible and tempting for subsequent adaptors because classical authors say so little about Ascanius, especially about his future career after the Aeneid, which is what these operas treat. The status of Ascanius as the ancestor of Augustus and of the Roman Empire has clear appeal to that empire’s self-conceived modern successors, the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburgs; and Ascanius’ key role as the conduit through which the blood of Aeneas passes to later rulers makes him a natural choice for pieces performed on occasions of royal marriages, stressing the crucial nature of genetic and dynastic continuity.