Female characters assumed increasing prominence in the narratives of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century opera. And for contemporary audiences, many of these characters--and the celebrated women who played them--still define opera at its finest and most searingly affective, even if storylines leave them swooning and faded by the end of the drama. The presence and representation of women in opera has been addressed in a range of recent studies that offer valuable insights into the operatic stage as cultural space, focusing a critical lens at the text and the position and signification of...

The period covered by this volume, roughly from Purcell to Elgar, has traditionally been seen as a dark age in British musical history. Much has been done recently to revise this view, though research still tends to focus on London as the commercial and cultural hub of the British Isles. It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that by the mid-eighteenth century musical activity outside London was highly distinctive in terms of its reach, the way it was organized, and its size, richness, and quality. There was an extraordinary amount of musical activity of all sorts, in provincial theatres...