‘...and therefore the Lord increased this her beauty ...’ (Judith 10:4) – the beauty of Judith in Italian oratorios of the Baroque

Baroque oratorios about biblical Judith are usually regarded as oratori erotici. However, our research, covering the whole of the Italian Baroque oratorio repertoire on this subject, has revealed that such works did not dominated that repertoire to such a significant degree. For around one-third of the librettists, Judith’s similarity to the donne forti of 17th-century Venetian operas was a true religious-moral and artistic challenge, accompanied by the conviction that thanks to music one could see with the ears what the lack of scenic action rendered invisible. The article cites several solutions for ‘mirror scenes’ in oratorios about Judith: both the openly secular (e.g. by A. Ottoboni and Vajani de Borgi) and those whose librettists endeavoured to include a commentary accentuating Judith’s spiritual virtues or divine inspiration (Gigli, Silvani). Others (including Metastasio) eschewed that which was sensual in Judith. That strategy may be compared to dissimulazione onesta, the honest concealment of the facts, which was popular in those times, particularly in Italy.