Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera
About the Book Series
The Ashgate Interdisciplinary Studies in Opera series provides a centralized and prominent forum for the presentation of cutting-edge scholarship that draws on numerous disciplinary approaches to a wide range of subjects associated with the creation, performance, and reception of opera and related genres in various historical and social contexts. Studies of all kinds, especially those that go beyond traditional approaches to reflect new perspectives not only in musicology, but in areas such as comparative literature, social history, philosophy, visual arts, theatre history and performance studies, film studies, political science, psychoanalysis, science, and medicine, are welcome. The series continues to move important scholarly trends forward by encouraging original scholarship that interrogates the complex means of artistic expression operative in opera. Essay collections and monographs on topics from the seventeenth century to contemporary times and from all geographical locations, including non-Western topics, are welcome.
Participatory Opera: Power and Agency in Post-Wagnerian Performance
1st Edition
By Kathryn L. Caton
April 16, 2026
Participatory Opera offers a critical analysis of spectator immersion and participation in contemporary opera, and explores resultant intersections with notions of individuality and community within these emerging contexts. As such, this book defines participatory opera, explores ways it challenges...
Opera in Transnational Contexts: Circulating Identities and Cultures
1st Edition
Edited
By Clair Rowden, Barbara Gentili, Paulo M. Kühl
March 30, 2026
Opera in Transnational Contexts: Circulating Identities and Cultures sheds important light onto the travels of operatic works and the types of cultural exchanges that occurred as a result of the music, composers, singers, impresarios, and others moving from one locale to another between the late ...
Genre Beyond Borders: Reassessing Operetta
1st Edition
Edited
By Bruno Bower, Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg, Sonja Starkmeth
June 27, 2025
This book offers an innovative approach to understanding operetta, drawing attention to its malleability and resistance to boundaries. These shows have traversed (and continue to traverse) with ease the national borders which might superficially define them, or draw on features from many other ...
Opera Outside the Box: Notions of Opera in Nineteenth-Century Britain
1st Edition
Edited
By Roberta Montemorra Marvin
May 27, 2024
Opera Outside the Box: Notions of Opera in Nineteenth-Century Britain addresses operatic “experiences” outside the opera houses of Britain during the nineteenth century. The essays adopt a variety of perspectives exploring the processes through which opera and ideas about opera were cultivated and ...
Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas: Sources, Performance, Interpretation
1st Edition
Edited
By Ellen Rosand, Stefano La Via
January 29, 2024
Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian Operas features chapters by a group of scholars and performers of varied backgrounds and specialties, who confront the various questions raised by Monteverdi’s late operas from an interdisciplinary perspective. The premise of the volume is the idea that constructive ...
Digital Scenography in Opera in the Twenty-First Century
1st Edition
By Caitlin Vincent
May 31, 2023
Digital Scenography in Opera in the Twenty-First Century is the first definitive study of the use of digital scenography in Western opera production. The book begins by exploring digital scenography’s dramaturgical possibilities and establishes a critical framework for identifying and comparing the...
The Operas of Rameau: Genesis, Staging, Reception
1st Edition
Edited
By Graham Sadler, Shirley Thompson, Jonathan Williams
May 31, 2023
In recent years, interest in Rameau’s operas has grown enormously. These works are no longer regarded as peripheral by performers and audiences but are increasingly staged in the world’s major opera houses and festivals, while the production of first-rate recordings on CD and DVD continues to ...
The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni
1st Edition
By Magnus Tessing Schneider
May 31, 2023
The Original Portrayal of Mozart’s Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766–1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by the composer himself, his ...
Curating Opera: Reinventing the Past Through Museums of Opera and Art
1st Edition
By Stephen Mould
August 29, 2022
Curation as a concept and a catchword in modern parlance has, over recent decades, become deeply ingrained in modern culture. The purpose of this study is to explore the curatorial forces at work within the modern opera house and to examine the functionaries and processes that guide them. In turn, ...
Contextualizing Melodrama in the Czech Lands: In Concert and on Stage
1st Edition
By Judith Mabary
April 29, 2022
The mention of the term "melodrama" is likely to evoke a response from laymen and musicians alike that betrays an acquaintance only with the popular form of the genre and its greatly heightened drama, exaggerated often to the point of the ridiculous. Few are aware that there exists a type of ...
The Operatic Archive: American Opera as History
1st Edition
By Colleen Renihan
December 13, 2021
The Operatic Archive: American Opera as History extends the growing interdisciplinary conversation in opera studies by drawing on new research in performance studies and the philosophy of history. Moving beyond traditional aesthetic conceptions of opera, this book argues for opera’s powerful ...
Einstein on the Beach: Opera beyond Drama
1st Edition
Edited
By Jelena Novak, John Richardson
August 02, 2021
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s most celebrated collaboration, the landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the Avignon Festival in 1976. During its initial European tour, Metropolitan Opera premiere, and revivals in 1984 and 1992, Einstein provoked opposed reactions from both ...