The institutionalization of a permanent Italian opera house in Copenhagen happened comparatively late for a European capital. The emergence of a new bourgeois audience, which for the first time shared loges with the aristocracy, created political and aesthetic turmoil linked to the politics of ‘Danishness’, Italophobia and anti-opera sentiment. This study focuses on Giuseppe Sarti, the first director of the opera in Copenhagen, and his strategies to adapt and translate opera for local audiences. The study examines connections between aesthetics, nationalism, and politics in Enlightenment Copenhagen. Bringing this perspective from the North into the study of opera in the age of reform allows us to understand not only the local context, but also the general processes by which Italian opera was adapted, produced, and consumed outside of Italy—and the problems faced by the diaspora of Italian musicians to Europe’s Northern periphery.