Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera

Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have undergone countless transformations since their premieres, shifting shape in response to a variety of new geographic, temporal, technological, and performative contexts. These enduring works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their contemporaries have myriad stories to tell. Fashions and Legacies reconstructs a selection of these stories, exploring ways in which operatic works have been reshaped and revived throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While focusing on how these works have been altered, the thirteen contributors in this book also respond to fundamental questions: how has this music retained or sacrificed its powerful messages in the face of deconstruction and recontextualization over time and place? What happens to these operas once they have escaped control of their authors? The contributions of singers, stage directors, conductors, and other theatrical personalities stand front and center of the volume.