"Un’ombra di profanità": oratori "con il palco e le scene" fra tardo Seicento e primo Settecento

Although the oratorio was a musical genre of a dramatic but not representative nature, the practice of oratorios performed on stage was not unknown since the late seventeenth century and the first decades of the eighteenth century. The article presents and analyzes all the evidence on this practice. In general, the stage performances of the oratorios documented in the essay are all linked to secular environments, in particular to some Italian academies, such as the Risvegliati and the Abbozzati of Pistoia, the Unisoni of Perugia and the Invaghiti of Mantua. This kind of stage performance preserves little or nothing of the original religious function, devotional or paraliturgical, of the oratorio. This is also proved by the fact that they were usually performed in secular spaces such as theaters or court halls.