Throughout the Ancien Regime, mythology played a vital role in opera, defining such epoch-making works as Claudio Monteverdi's La favola d Orfeo (1607) and Christoph Gluck s Iphigenie en Tauride (1779). The operatic presence of the Greco-Roman gods and heroes was anything but unambiguous or unproblematic, however. (Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Regime Opera highlights myth s chameleonic life in the Italian dramma per musica and French tragedie en musique of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Written by eminent scholars in the fields...
Throughout the Ancien Regime, mythology played a vital role in opera, defining such epoch-making works as Claudio Monteverdi's La favola d Orfe...