Opera: from what fertile ground did it spring? How did this new art form so completely capture the imagination of a nation, a continent, a world? This exciting history connects twenty centuries, investigating the antecedents of early opera, particularly the extent to which Classical Athenian tragedy influenced the humanist theorists and musical practitioners of northern Italy from the fifteenth through the early decades of the seventeenth century. What role, precisely, did Greek myth play in forming early opera, especially the magical story of Orpheus with his lyre, conquering the land of...