Spectatum Admissi Risum Teneatis?

If 21st Century Opera descends into self-parody, it won't be the first time. Venetian opera in the 17th Century appears to have had some (perhaps more) of the same capacity for absurd access. George Frideric Handel brought some of that tradition with him when he introduced the latest Italian fashions to an English audience with his presentation of Rinaldo in 1710. He was met with skepticism by the journalist/essayist Joseph Addison (whose own opera libretto, produced just four years before, has long since disappeared into the void). In an essay for The Spectator, Addison visited his contempt on the new style:

As I was walking in the streets about a fortnight ago, I saw an ordinary fellow carrying a cage full of little birds upon his shoulder; and, as I was wondering with myself what use he would put them to, he was met very luckily by an acquaintance who had the same curiosity. Upon his asking him what he had upon his shoulder, he told him, teat he had been buying sparrows for the opera. Sparrows for the opera! says his friend, licking his lips; what, are they to be roasted? No, no, says the other; they are to enter towards the end of the first act, and to fly about the stage.

This strange dialogue awakened my curiosity so far, that I immediately bought the opera, by which means I perceived the sparrows were to act the part of singing birds in a delightful grove; though, upon a nearer inquiry, I found the sparrows put the same trick upon the audience, that Sir Martin Mar-all practised upon his mistress; for, though they flew in sight, the music proceeded from a concert of flagelets and bird-calls which were planted behind the scenes.

.[In Handel's Rinaldo] there have been so many flights of them let loose ..., that it is feared the house will never get rid of them; and that in other plays they may make their entrance in very wrong and improper scenes, so as to be seen flying in a lady's bed-chamber, or perching upon a king's throne; besides the inconveniences which the heads of the audiences may sometimes suffer from them.

--Joseph Addison, The Spectator No. 5, Tuesday, March , 1711

The heading to this post is the epigraph from Addison's essay. The source is Horace, Ars Poetica V, 5. A translation is: admitted to the sight, would you not laugh?