Opera and the Built Environment

Laura Vasilyeva is associate professor of musicology at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, from the Cambridge Opera Journal to The Opera Quarterly. This is her first book.

“To understand opera we need to understand opera houses: this is the deceptively simple premise of Opera and the Built Environment. In Vasilyeva’s hands, however, it is an idea made foundational, as the classic tiered design of the operatic theater is revealed as a place of thresholds and surfaces, materials and atmospheres. Within its spaces, the operatic canon looks and sounds different, too, in the inseparability of the repertoire from the buildings in which it has for so long been performed. Across each chapter, we encounter the opera house transfigured, and by the end of this remarkable book the history of opera itself has been subtly reshaped.”

• List of Illustrations and Tables1. ArchitectureDivisive ArchitectureDistributed ArchitectureBlueprint2. Surfaces(Chromo)phobiaRedSur-FaceErasure3. AtmosphereRansacked EarthPure AirDirty OperaEscapist Fantasies4. AcousticsOrchestra ChamberCalibrating AcousticsProtected SpaceAcoustic SignaturesPure Sound?5. ThresholdsEthics of BoundariesColonial MetalCellular ExpansionAcknowledgmentsAppendixNotesBibliographyIndex