Includes bibliographical references (page 244) and index.

'One of the most magnificent and expensive diversions the wit of man can invent,' wrote the diarist John Evelyn after his visit to the opera in Venice in 1645--just eight years after the world's first commercial opera house had opened in that city. Today few people would wholly dissent from Evelyn's view of opera. Its masterpieces rank among the supreme achievements of both music and drama. Yet a fine operatic performance also generates an indefinable aura, compounded of theatrical excitement, extravagance and a sense of occasion that no other art can quite command. The author treats opera as a branch of the theatre, whose essential features are dramatic confrontation and dialogue, intensified by music on the stage and in the orchestra. In his lavishly illustrated text he surveys not only musical evolution, but changing theatrical conditions, theatre architecture and the increasing influence of the producer. Though his story is inevitably dominated by Italy, Germany, and Austria, the author traces in detail the important developments in France, England, Russia and other continental nations and devotes a chapter to the Americas. Operetta, musical comedy and the musical are also given their place. In his evaluation of the twentieth century, he shows how opera's horizons have been widened by new techniques of composition, new theatrical concepts, modern psychology and advances in acoustical engineering--opera, he concludes, remains as vital an art form today as it has ever been.

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