The beginnings of German-language opera can only be sketched loosely based on available sources. Our knowledge of its early history depends on ‘dates without visual aids’1 and ‘words without songs’, that is, mentions of performances and dates in more-or-less reliable archives, chronicles, and bibliographies,2 as well as mute libretti, which ultimately only hint at how the first opera-like works in German sounded and were performed onstage. The musical losses must be considerable. According to cautious estimates, in the twenty-four known sites of operatic performance in Protestant-Lutheran regions in northern, central, and southern Germany, about 230 works were performed in the seventeenth century alone.3