The names of the operatic genres used in the early eighteenth century reveal a general tendency toward a division between the serious dramma per musica (“play for music”), which was stripped of any comic element by libretto reforms until the achievement of the Metastasian model, and the commedia per musica (“com-edy through music”), which originated in Italy and was increasingly exported by troupes traveling throughout Europe. Between these two extremes, however, there is a plethora of mixed genres that maintain the mixture of the tragic and the comic that characterized 17th-century dramma per musica. Among these, the tragicom-media per musica seems to have been a trademark of the Viennese court, which favored tragicomic works for the carnival season, reserving serious works for oc-casions celebrating imperial power (genetliacs, name days, and weddings). How-ever, the term tragicommedia per musica is also found in other operatic centers, notably Venice, where Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati worked as librettists before moving to the Viennese court. The aim of this paper is to highlight the peculiarities of Viennese tragicomedy as the result, on the one hand, of the permanence of an indige-nous tradition and, on the other hand, of fruitful cultural transfer relations with Venice, a productive and fertile ground for experimentation with new operatic genres.