A BIBLIAI PARADICSOMTÓL MOZART PÁSZTORKIRÁLYÁIG
From the Paradise of Bible to Mozart’s “Il re pastore”

Summary/Abstract: Metastasio, the librettist of Mozart’s “Il re pastore” wrote his libretto on the basis of Curtius Rufus and according to the claims of his epoch and royal court of Maria Theresa with due knots. Aminta, mounted the throne by the favour of Alexander the Great, is nobody else as Abdalonymus, mentioned repeatedly by ancient authors. He was bearer of mythic oriental traditions whose figure was transformed to (the invented) Cincinnatus, incarnating the ancient Roman ideals. Recently, the orientalist W. Fauth revealed the far-ramified treasure of this oriental tradition in his wide-ranging study. By its help the classical philologist can establish unexpected coherences between the cosmological relations of the ancient oriental royal symbolics and the phenomena, unexplained so far, of the Greco-Roman culture (descriptions of paradise, Roma quadrata, political motives of the rise of Roman historiography, etc.). As addition to the subject presented itself the contemporary description of the game reserve at Vienna of the Austrian archduke Maximilian (the later Emperor and King) as an attempt to put into practice the antique idea of paradise in modern Europe.

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