Oratorio and Sacred Opera, 1700-1825: Terminology and Genre Distinction

What distinguishes Italian oratorio from Italian sacred opera in the period from around 1700 to around 1825? The question arises from the significant difference between the use of the term ‘oratorio’ by Italian writers and composers at the beginning and end of this period. About 1700 nearly all Italian writers and composers applied the term to works performed without stage action. A century later, on the other hand, Italian writers and composers frequently applied the term to works that were presented as sacred operas. By the early nineteenth century the application of the term to a sacred work with stage action had become so common that it found its way into an Italian musical dictionary. In Lichtenthal's Dizionario ‘oratorio’ is defined as 'A species of drama, the subject of which is a theme selected from sacred history, performed by singers with the accompaniment of an orchestra, either in a church, or in a hall, or indeed on a theatrical stage - in this last case one means Opera sacra , and it bears the mark of the usual Opere in musica , having the same form and conduct.