Opera, Musicology, and History

The interactions between operas and the societies in which they were composed and first heard are of interest to both historians and musicologists, especially because operas since the seventeenth century have had significant connections with political and social change. The essays in this special double issue of the journal, entitled “Opera and History”, pursue the connection in six settings: seventeenth-century Venice; Handel's London; Revolutionary Europe from 1790 to 1830; Restoration and Risorgimento Italy; Europe during the birth of Modernism from 1890 to 1930; and twentieth-century America.