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.

‘… the anthology navigates the long nineteenth century, Europe, the Atlantic, and the globe, in quite original ways, providing plenty of new knowledge, plenty of fine case studies, plenty of food for thought.’

Jens Hesselager Source: H-Soz-Kult

‘This is, in short, a valuable contribution to the growing literature on the means and meanings of Italian opera’s global spread during the long nineteenth century, which offers up newly granular detail on many of the places it examines.’

Flora Willson Source: Die Musikforschung