Cambridge Studies in Opera Séria

Designed as a resource for opera lovers, opera professionals, and music students, this book provides a guide to Saint-Saens's twelve operas and a variety of other stage works for those who are curious to know more. It will enhance listeners' experience of recordings of Saint-Saens, which are enjoying increased popularity as his centenary approaches.

Castelvecchi presents a critical re-evaluation of the operatic genre system and the cult of sensibility in the age of Mozart.

This new approach to the operas of Handel examines the vital and intertwined roles of singers, audiences and local cultural context in creating eighteenth- century opera. It emphasises cultural context and aspects of performance, offering a range of interpretative tools not previously exploited in studies of the century's opera before Mozart.

Susan Rutherford explores Verdi's operas in the context of women's social, cultural and political history in nineteenth-century Italy.

Boyd-Bennett investigates the relationship of music and politics in the aftermath of war and dictatorship. Bringing locality into the study of twentieth-century music by focussing on the Italian and Venetian contexts, she shows how music culture was deeply imbedded in the most pressing social and cultural concerns of the post-war period.