The Medici wedding festivities of 1589 -- Pietro Bardi on the birth of opera -- L'Euridice, The second opera -- Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo -- Monteverdi criticizes a libretto -- Sant'Alessio at the Barberini Palace, Rome -- Opera comes to Venice and goes public -- Lully is granted a monopoly on opera in French -- Le Grand Siècle absorbs La Tragédie en musique -- Saint-Evremond's view on opera -- The first English operas -- Handel's Rinaldo at the Haymarket Theatre -- Pier Jacopo Martello on opera -- The Président de Brosses in Italy -- Metastasio on setting dramatic recitative to music -- From Rousseau's Confessions -- The War of the Buffoons -- Interlude: a travelling company -- Operatic reform in Vienna : Gluck and Calzabigi -- Gluck in Paris -- Mozart at work on Die Entführung aus dem Serail -- Grétry's Richard Couer-de-Lion -- The making of Le Nozze di Figaro -- Kierkegaard's Don Giovanni -- Fidelio in 1806 -- Berlioz's estimate of Spontini -- E. T. A. Hoffman on music drama that springs from the heart -- The first performance of Il Barbiere di Siviglia -- Der Freischütz : a German triumph -- Parisian Grand Opéra : Auber's La Muette de Portici as seen by Wagner -- Interlude : Madame Pasta -- Verdi's own story of how Nabucco was composed -- Verdi's operatic style analysed by a contemporary -- Wagner on the evolution of his style -- Wagner's theory of drama -- Divergent reactions to Boris Godonov -- Tchaikovsky on Eugene Onegin -- Nietzsche vs. Wagner -- Verdi's Otello -- Interlude : Verdi and Wagner in Vienna -- Verismo -- Four men at work on La Bohème -- Pelléas et Mélisande -- Strauss and Hofmannsthal at work on Der Rosenkavalier -- Duke Bluebeard's Castle -- Busoni and the reinstatement of disbelief -- In defense of Kát'a Kabanová -- Alban Berg on Wozzeck -- Brecht on epic opera -- Shostakovich and the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk debacle

Collates over 100 primary-source documents for students of the history of opera. The varied selections - which include letters, excerpts of journals, bits of libretti, and contemporary criticism - provide eye-witness commentary on the world of opera from its late-Renaissance infancy through modern times. Each selection is introduced by an extensive headnote that both explains the document's context and positions it in the book's overall narrative

Dawson