During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the models of Greek tragedy and Aristotelian theory were appealed to repeatedly, first to invent the dramatic genre we call opera, and then in an effort to use theory to rid that genre of what were perceived to be its self-indulgent excesses. This essay argues that despite these theoretical claims, influences from classical Rome were so thoroughly ingrained in European librettists that it was the experience of the Latin that prevailed. Roman subject matter, dramatic structure, philosophical fashion and imperial performance-context produced a musical theatre that was in essence Roman rather than Greek.

London composers competed for a music prize in 1701, setting William Congreve's libretto on the judgment of Paris, a beauty contest among Juno, Pallas and Venus. Paris, contest judge, exiled prince and amorous shepherd, prefers Venus, placing love above Juno's promised empire and Pallas's martial success. This essay reveals the general political meanings of the judgment of Paris myth, shows how the tale had been used to critique Charles II and James II, examines the political beliefs of the sponsors and librettist, and demonstrates how music by John Eccles, Daniel Purcell and John Weldon supported the politics of Congreve's libretto.

Through brief case studies of burlesques of Ernani, Il trovatore and La traviata written for nineteenth-century London, this essay makes a preliminary examination of the nature of Victorian operatic burlesques, why they existed, and how they functioned artistically and sociologically. My larger purpose is threefold: to investigate the manner in which burlesque interpreted the foreign art form of Italian opera in a culture self-consciously identified as English, to consider how these works traversed class differences in an evolving socio-cultural milieu, and to ask how we might understand the these works in relation to the cultural codes of Victorian London.

The theme of transformation (Verwandlung) plays a significant role in the work of Richard Strauss, from his Tod und Verklärung (1889) to his Metamorphosen (1945). This article examines two Strauss operas where transformation is a central aspect of the libretto: Ariadne auf Naxos (1912/16), libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Daphne (1937), libretto by Joseph Gregor. Though each opera focuses on transformation, this concept is interpreted and realized in entirely different ways. For Hofmannsthal, Verwandlung is a journey outward to a new level of existence, attaining a new sense of humanity. For Gregor, transformation is an inward movement, joining nature, and becoming divine in the German-Romantic sense of the term.

Luciano Berio's Un re in ascolto is based on a complex web of sources – writings by Calvino, Barthes, Kafka, Auden, Shakespeare and others – themselves intricately interrelated through games of citation and revision. Linking all these texts is a scene in which a male artist is confronted by a voice outside of his control. This scene is re-enacted – unexpectedly – at the climax of Berio's work. In this new context the unruly voice sounds like a revenant from a form long presumed dead: pure opera and absolute madness.