Opera: a history in documents

The Medici wedding festivities of 1589 (de Rossi)

Pietro Bardi on the birth of opera

L'euridice, the second opera (Buonarroti, Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini)

Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo (Guidotti, Cavalieri)

Monteverdi criticizes a libretto

Sant Alessio at the Barberini Palace, Rome (Rospigliosi, Bouchard)

Opera comes to Venice and goes public (Ivanovich)

Lully is granted a monopoly on opera in French (Colbert, Lully)

The Grand siecle absorbs the Tragedie en musique (Perrault, La Fontaine, Boileau)

Saint-Evremond's views on opera

The first English operas (Dryden)

Handel's Rinaldo at the Haymarket Theatre (Hill, G. Rossi, Addison, Steele)

Pier Jacopo Martello on opera (1715)

The President de Brosses in Italy (1739)

Metastasio on setting dramatic recitative to music

From Rousseau's Confessions

The war of the buffoons (d'Holbach)

Interlude: a traveling company (G. Gozzi)

Operatic reform in Vienna: Gluck and Calzabigi

Gluck in Paris (Meister)

Mozart at work on Die Entfuhrung Aus Dem Serail

Gretry's Richard coeur-de-lion (Meister, Gretry)

The making of Le nozze di figaro (L. and W.A. Mozart, Da Ponte)

Kierkegaard's Don Giovanni

Fidelio in 1806 (Rockel)

Berlioz's Estimate of Spontini

E.T.A. Hoffmann on "music drama that springs from the heart"

The first performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia (Righetti-Giorgi)

Der Freischutz: a German triumph (M.M. von Weber)

Parisian grand opera: Auber's La Muette de Portici as seen by Wagner

Interlude: Madame pasta (Hunt)

Verdi's own story of how Nabucco was composed

Verdi's operatic style analyzed by a contemporary (Basevi)

Wagner on the evolution of his style

Wagner's theory of drama

Divergent reactions to Boris Godunov (Laroche, Stasov)

Tchaikovsky on Eugene Onegin

Nietzsche vs. Wagner

Verdi's Otello (Boito, Verdi, Morelli)

Interlude: Verdi and Wagner in Vienna (J. Sulzer)

Verismo (Verga)

Four men at work on La boheme (Illica, Puccini, Ricordi, Giacosa)

Pelleas et Melisande (Mauclair, journalist, Debussy)

Strauss and Hofmannsthal work on Der Rosenkavalier

Duke Bluebeard's castle (Ballasz)

Busoni and the reinstatement of disbelief

In defense of Kata Kabanova (Stuart)

Alban Berg on Wozzeck

Brecht on "epic opera"

Shostakovich and the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Debacle (Shostakovich, Pravda)

Interlude: an Italian claque (Montale)

Peter Grimes in postwar London (Edm. Wilson)

Stravinsky, Auden, and The rake's progress

A first reaction to Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites (Mila)

Einstein on the beach by Philip Glass (Page)

John Adams on Nixon in China.