Series: Opera Lab: Explorations in History, Technology, and Performance

A new theory of personhood makes the case that a "person" has always been an aesthetic category, not just a legal, political, or moral one. What does it mean to be a person? One might think of the possession of certain rights, having the capacity for love, or being self-determined. But if words like "person" or "love" seem to carry...

The first book to examine the classic Italian opera house in a global context. In Opera and the Built Environment, music scholar Laura Vasilyeva considers the remarkable mass construction of opera houses around the world since the 1800s and the no-less-remarkable bids to standardise the architectural features of their interiors across this vast theatrical infrastructure. Now known as the teatro...

From the theatrical stage to the literary salon, the figure of Sappho—the ancient poet and inspiring icon of feminine creativity—played a major role in the intertwining histories of improvisation, text, and performance throughout the nineteenth century. Exploring the connections between operatic and poetic improvisation in Italy and beyond, Singing Sappho combines earwitness accounts of famous female improviser-virtuosi with erudite analysis...