Thesis title: Le metamorfosi di Armida. Evoluzione drammaturgica di un soggetto tassiano nel teatro musicale italiano del Seicento
This research examines the dramaturgical evolution of the character of Armida in seventeenth-century Italian musical theatre, from the formative phase of early opera to the systematization of the French model with Lully’s Armide (1686). Taking as its foundational core the episode from Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, the study investigates the ways in which the character is progressively refashioned for the stage, acquiring an autonomous profile distinct from the original epic model. Due to the fragmentary survival of musical sources, the research focuses primarily on librettos and adopts a comparative approach aimed at reconstructing the principal trajectories in the transformation of the Armida subject. Through the analysis of dramatic structures, scenographic solutions, paratextual materials, and narrative strategies employed in Italian librettos between 1600 and 1677 (from Giovanni Villifranchi to Benedetto Ferrari, Virgilio Puccitelli, Ascanio Pio di Savoia, Carlo Plantamuro, Francesco Maria Santinelli, and Angela Orsi), the study reveals a gradual process of centralization of Armida’s role, as she evolves from epic antagonist into tragic protagonist and driving force of the theatrical action. Particular attention is devoted to the gender dynamics that shape her representation, oscillating between empowerment and patriarchal containment. Armida is also examined within the broader mythic and literary tradition of the “dangerous woman,” rooted in ancient archetypes and reinterpreted within the cultural framework of the Counter-Reformation. The research is further enriched by the analysis of rare surviving musical sources—Alessandro Capece’s autograph manuscript and a late seventeenth-century anonymous intermezzo—which help to recover sonic fragments of a largely lost tradition. The study demonstrates that the seventeenth century should not be regarded as merely a preparatory phase, but rather as the decisive laboratory in which the structural, symbolic, and spectacular coordinates of Armida’s role in European musical theatre were defined. The character’s extraordinary flexibility—her ability to modulate between fury and surrender, magical power and emotional vulnerability—accounts for her enduring presence in the history of opera.