Italian Opera in Global and Transnational Perspective

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. Covering different parts of Europe, the Americas, Southeast and East Asia, it investigates the impact of transnational musical exchanges on notions of national identity associated with the production and reception of Italian opera across the world. As a consequence of these exchanges between composers, impresarios, musicians and audiences, ideas of operatic Italianness (italianità) constantly changed and had to be reconfigured, reflecting the radically transformative experience of time and space that throughout the nineteenth century turned opera into a global aesthetic commodity. The book opens with a substantial introduction discussing key concepts in cross-disciplinary perspective and concludes with an epilogue relating its findings to different historiographical trends in transnational opera studies.

Axel Körner is Professor of Modern Cultural and Intellectual History at Leipzig University and an Honorary Professor at University College London. He is author of Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy (2009) and America in Italy (2017), which won the American Historical Association's Marraro Prize. Paulo Kühl is Associate Professor at the University of Campinas, Brazil. He has published widely on Italian opera in Portugal and Brazil, with a focus on adaptations and translations of operas, censorship, and libretto studies.