Philon Und Theone

This is the first critical edition of Georg Anton Bendas Philon und Theone (1779). Benda is best known for his earlier melodramas Ariadne auf Naxos (1775), Medea (1775), and Pygmalion (1779), which are characterized by instrumental music that alternates and occasionally overlaps declaimed text and pantomime. Indeed, these works have come to define the genre and are considered the archetypal eighteenth-century German melodramas. Yet Bendas little-known Philon und Theonean orphic story of a voyager searching for his lost belovedchallenges these models, for it embraces not only the instrumental music typical of the genre, but also vocal music. Furthermore, Philon und Theone includes a male, not the typical female, melodramatic protagonist, whose deteriorating cognitive state plays a central role in the story. This one-act work can therefore be understood as among the first reform melodramas that have hitherto received little scholarly attention yet can offer fresh insight into the aesthetic intersections of instrumental and vocal traditions around 1800.