Charles Dill, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

'...there is much here to stimulate and enhance the enjoyment of the thoughtful opera-goer, while at the same time there is much food for thought for performers, and above all producers...' Opera

• Contents: Introduction; Part I Librettos: Why early opera is Roman not Greek, Robert C. Ketterer; Staging an opera: letters from the Cesarian poet, Roger Savage; Dramatic dualities: opera pairs from Minato to Metastasio, Reinhard Strohm; Metastasio on the Spanish stage: operatic adaptations in the public theatres of Madrid in the 1730s, José-Máximo Leza; 'Le théâtre ne change qu'à la troisième scène': the hand of the author and unity of place in Act V of Hippolyte et Aricie, Geoffrey Burgess; The Beggar's Opera and opéra-comique en vaudevilles, Daniel Heartz; 'His spirit is in action seen': Milton, Mrs Clive and the simulacra of the pastoral in Comus, Berta Joncus. Part II Gender: Reforming Achilles: gender, opera seria, and the rhetoric of the enlightened hero, Wendy Heller; Female operatic cross-dressing: Bernado Saddumene's libretto for Leonardo Vinci's Li zite 'n galera, Nina Treadwell; Of women, sex, and folly: opera under the old regime, Georgia Cowart; The castrato as history, Katherine Bergeron. Part III Theatres and Performing: 'An infinity of factions': opera in 18th-century Britain and the undoing of society, Suzanne Aspden; Ignaz Holzbauer and the origins of German opera in Vienna, Lawrence Bennett; Heidegger and the management of the Haymarket Opera, 1713-17, Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume; Farinelli in Madrid: opera, politics, and the War of Jenkins' Ear, Thomas McGeary; An 18th-century singer's commission of 'baggage' arias, Daniel E. Freeman; Staging and its dramatic effect in French baroque opera: evidence from prompt notes, Antonia L. Banducci; The Paris Opéra chorus during the time of Rameau, Mary Cyr; What recitatives owe to the airs: a look at the dialogue scene, Act 1 Scene 2 of Rameau's Hippolyte et Aricie - version with airs, Cynthia Verba. Part IV Handel: Irony and borrowing in Handel's 'Agrippina', John E. Sawyer; Classical history and Handel's 'Alessandro', Richard G. King; Dejanira and the physicians: aspects of hysteria i