Unscrupulous, devilishly ambitious and undeniably charismatic, Domenico Barbaja was the most celebrated Italian impresario of the early 1800s and one of the mos

Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854) was a legendary tenor and the first 19th-century non-castrati male singer to become an international star of opera. The pre

This volume of essays discusses the European and global expansion of Italian opera and the significance of this process for debates on opera at home in Italy. C

Everyone is familiar with the words diva or prima donna, which have come to mean a (usually) outrageous operatic soprano, but there was a time when the star of

Did you know that Bach invested in mines? That Rossini improved his income by running casinos in the opera houses which on weekends performed his operas? Or tha