The Cambridge companion to seventeenth-century opera

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Includes bibliographical references and index.The Italian foundations. Opera is born : the wedding of music and drama in late Renaissance Florence / Barbara Russano-Hanning ; ...e poi le parole" : towards a history of the libretto / Tim Carter ; Opera as spectacle, opera as drama / Margaret Murata -- Society, institutions, and production. Opera for a paying public (Italy c. 1637-c. 1700) / Beth L. Glixon ; "una bella voce, un bel trillo, d un bel passaggio" : opera singers in seventeenth century Italy / Colleen Reardon ; Opera, gender, and voice / Christine Jeanneret / Dance and ballet / Rebecca Harris-Warrick ; Staging opera in the seventeenth century / Roger Savage -- National Traditions (outside Italy). Opera in France c. 1640-c. 1710 / Laura Naudeix ; Song and declamation in French opera / Jacqueline Waeber ; Opera in England / Amanda Eubanks Winkler ; The development of opera in German / Michael Maul ; Opera in Spain and the Spanish Dominions in Italy and the Americas / Louise K. Stein."By the middle of the twentieth century, Joseph Kerman had had no major qualms by giving the headline "The Dark Ages" to one of the chapters of his book, Opera and Drama. By this, he meant the period between Monteverdi and Gluck. Granted, the expression may have been chosen cum grano salis, and Kerman then seemed to moderate his claim, stressing that this period was also "the great age of opera." Song, music, stage design, the "enormous" amount of libretti, all this testified of an "unbelievable development and unbelievable activity." During the Baroque era, the ink of their scores barely dried, operas were staged in an overwhelming cadence, be it on the Italian theaters or elsewhere in Europe. This led to the rise of a "star-system" dominated by the cults of the castrato and the "prima donna." The era also saw the advent of operatic spectacularity through the use of extravagant machineries. But in the end, once an opera had lived through a few performances, it was then "thrown away