Essays on Opera, 1750-1800

The study of opera in the second half of the eighteenth century has flourished during the last several decades, and our knowledge of the operas written during that period and of their aesthetic, social, and political context has vastly increased. This volume explores opera and operatic life of the years 1750-1800 through a selection of articles intended to represent the last few decades of scholarship in all its excitement and variety.

Introduction; Part I Aesthetics and Dramaturgy: The theory and practice of piccinnisme, Julian Rushton; Recitative and dramaturgy in the dramma per musica, Raymond Monelle; Opera versus drama: Romeo and Juliet in 18th-century Germany, Thomas Bauman; Mozart's operas and the myth of musical unity, James Webster. Part II Singers: Raaff's last aria: a Mozartian idyll in the spirit of Hasse, Daniel Heartz; Galuppi, Tenducci, and Motezuma: a commentary on the history and musical style of opera seria after 1750, Dale E. Monson; 'Ich bin die erste Sÿngerin': vocal profiles of two Mozart sopranos, Patricia Lewy Gidwitz; Mozart's Ilia and Elettra: new perspectives on Idomeneo, Paul Corneilson. Part III Sensibility, Sentiment, and the Pastoral: 'Pamela': the offspring of Richardson's heroine in 18th-century opera, Mary Hunter; Human nature in the unnatural garden: Figaro as pastoral, Wye J. Allanbrook; From Nina to Nina: psychodrama, absorption and sentiment in the 1780s, Stefano Castelvecchi; L'arbore di Diana: a model for Così fan tutte, Dorothea Link; The sentimental muse of opera buffa, Edmund J. Goehring. Part IV Orientalism and Exoticism: Mozart in Turkey, Benjamin Perl; Oriental tyranny in the extreme West: reflections on Amiti e Ontario and Le gare generose, Pierpaolo Polzonetti. Part V Opera and Politics: On the freedom of the theatre and censorship: the Adrien controversy (1792), Elizabeth C. Bartlet; Songs to shape a German nation: Hiller's comic operas and the public sphere, Estelle Joubert. Part VI Mozart and His Viennese Contemporaries: Mozart's fee for Così fan tutte, Dexter Edge; How original was Mozart? Evidence from opera buffa, John Platoff; Salieri's Così fan tutte, Bruce Alan Brown and John A.Rice; Die Zauberflöte, Masonic opera, and other fairy tales, David J. Buch. Part VII Opera Seria: The Venetian role in the transformation of Italian opera seria in the 1790s, Marita P. McClymonds; Mayr, Rossini, and the development of the opera seria du