Abstract
This thesis presents the idea that composers and librettists of opera have primarily turned to Greek tragedy in order to legitimise developments within the operatic genre, despite the significant anachronisms involved in their conception of Greek tragedy itself. In particular, we see the relationship between the two become of particular concern when operatic producers have sought to redefine the nature of music drama. The prestige of the ancient artform in academic and artistic circles since the Renaissance has lent it an enormous potency as a means of legitimisation in opera, but its appropriation by operatic producers inevitably leads to a recontextualization of the ancient artform for the time it is being produced. This thesis seeks to bring to light these recontextualizations and explore the factors that produced them, thus embracing not only the reception of ancient tragedy in opera but themes from European cultural history more broadly.
The thesis presents three case studies that explore three key moments in operatic history where Greek tragedy was appropriated as a means of legitimising developments in the idea of music drama. The first case study explores how Greek tragedy was used by the earliest operatic producers, the Florentine Camerata, in order to legitimise the idea of entirely sung drama; the second study explores how Gluck and his librettists appropriated Greek tragedy in order to legitimise their desire to curb the perceived excesses of Metastasian opera seria and thus conceived of a new relationship between music and drama in opera; while the final case study explores the appropriation of Greek tragedy in the aesthetic theories of Richard Wagner and their subsequent manifestation in Der Ring des Nibelungen.