The World of Italian Opera

In searching through various studies on the opera, one invariably comes upon an obligatory reference to the legendary 1897 work, The Opera: A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions of every Work in the Modern Repertory by R. A. Streatfeild, and an introduction by J. A. Fuller-Maitland, published in London by John C. Nimmo and in Philadelphia by J. B. Lippincott Company. In 1998, while preparing to teach a Pace University-Westchester course on the opera, I was lucky enough to find a copy of the book, I offered my students excerpts - without changing the text or opinions of the original source - after extensively up-dating its antiquated grammatical usage and diction. The present computer-assisted modernized edition is presented here with several public domain graphic embellishments that perhaps add more pleasure in reading this version of Streatfeild's The Opera, with references devoted solely to the Italian history of the genre.