Steven Huebner, Professor, McGill University, Canada

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• Contents: Introduction; Part I Contexts: Some difficulties in the historiography of Italian opera, Fabrizio Della Seta; Metaphors for Meyerbeer, Cormac Newark; Italian romanticism and Italian opera: an essay in their affinities, Gary Tomlinson; Verismo: origin, corruption and redemption of an operatic term, Andreas Giger; Felice Romani, librettist by trade, Alessandro Roccatagliati; Frederick Gye and 'the dreadful business of opera management', Gabriella Dideriksen and Matthew Ringel; Opera audiences in Paris 1830-1870, Steven Huebner; Verdian opera burlesqued: a glimpse into mid-Victorian theatrical culture, Roberta Montemorra Marvin. Part II Composition and Analysis: History and works that have no history: reviving Rossini's Neapolitan operas, Philip Gossett; 'La solita forma and 'the uses of convention"', Harold S. Powers; A key for chi? Tonal areas in Puccini, Roger Parker and Allan W. Atlas; 'Tristan' in the composition of 'Pelléas', Carolyn Abbate. Part III Criticism: 'Dormez donc, mes chers amours': Hérold's La Somnambule (1827) and dream phenomena on the Parisian lyric stage, Sarah Hibberd; 'TB sheets': love and disease in La Traviata, Arthur Groos; Masked balls, Ralph Hexter; Return of the repressed: the prima donna from Hoffmann's Tales to Offenbach's Contes, Heather Hadlock; Smyth the anarchist: fin-de-siècle radicalism in The Wreckers, Suzanne B. Robinson. Part IV Performance: Knowing the score: Italian opera as work and play, Philip Gossett; Ornamenting Verdi's arias: the continuity of a tradition, David Lawton; 'La cantate delle passioni:' Giuditta Pasta and the idea of operatic performance, Susan B. Rutherford; The sea and the stars and the wastes of the desert, Roger Parker; Name Index.