The past four decades have seen an explosion in research regarding seventeenth-century opera. In addition to investigations of extant scores and librettos, scho

"In this elegantly constructed study of the early decades of public opera, the conflicts and cooperation of poets, composers, managers, designers, and singers�

In this book, Emily Wilbourne boldly traces the roots of early opera back to the sounds of the commedia dell’arte. Along the way, she forges a new history of

Opera developed during a time when the position of women—their rights and freedoms, their virtues and vices, and even the most basic substance of their sexual