In the newly popularized genre of opera during the seventeenth century, the allegorical
prologue was commonly used as a preface from about 1600 to 1670, with
no fewer than 98 opera prologues composed throughout Venice during this period.
These prologues, often sung by allegories and/or characters from myth, set the
stage for the proceeding drama. In the prologue to Francesco Cavalli’s 1640 opera
Gli Amori d’Apollo e di Dafne, its characters, the gods of sleep and dreams, set
the stage for an opera that revolves around a dream. This article explores the act of
wishing the audience peaceful and pleasant dreams by using oratory as a method
that the allegorical figures use to sing the audience a lullaby. The purpose of this
lullaby is to instigate the suspension of disbelief required to allow the story to
gain the audience’s credibility. This article will show how Cavalli’s opera does so
uniquely by spatially extending its effects outwards onto the audience rather than
only onto the characters onstage.