Almost every essay is rooted in seventeenth-century Venice. Nonetheless, the editors have achieved what amounts to a landmark collection of scholarly commentary on the compositional, spatial, visual, hermeneutic, and socio-political power of musical drama in this period. will appeal to scholars across a wide array of disciplines. Encourages a keen reconsideration of documentary sources and the stratified ways in which ... Read morethey can be read, . . . combining empirical analysis with a keen cultural and humanistic perspective. [Cusick's chapter] engages the reader in an old musicological topic made fresh by means of a compelling methodological framework.
MUSIC & LETTERS
The excellent scholarship, brilliant insights, and fresh and sometimes unconventional thinking in this impressive collection offer a significant contribution to the study of the relationship of music and verbal text in seventeenth-century Italy. Representing modern approaches to questions that in some cases are more than a century old, these essays reflect a harmonious variety of methods, points of view, and interests.
Hendrik Schulze, University of North Texas
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