Developed from a conference organized by the Social Science Research Council.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 364-394) and index.

The representation of social and political relations in operatic wor ks : introduction to part I / Jane F. Fulcher -- Venice's mythic empire s : truth and verisimilitude in Venetian opera / Wendy Heller -- Lully' s on-stage societies / Rebecca Harris-Warrick -- Representations of "le peuple" in French opera, 1673-1764 / Catherine Kintzler -- Woman's rol es in Meyerbeer's operas : how Italian heroines are reflected in French grand opera / Naomi André -- The effect of a bomb in the hall : the F rench "opera of ideas" and its cultural role in the 1920s / Jane F. Ful cher.

The institutional bases for the production and reception of opera : introduction to part II / Thomas Ertman -- State and market, production and style : an interdisciplinary approach to eighteenth-century Italia n opera history / Franco Piperno -- Opera and the cultural authority of the capital city / William Weber -- "Edizioni distrutte" and the signi ficance of operatic choruses during the Risorgimento / Philip Gossett - - Opera in France, 1870-1914 : between nationalism and foreign imports / Christophe Charle -- Fascism and the operatic unconscious / Michael P . Steinberg and Suzanne Stewart-Steinberg.

Theorizing opera and the social : introduction to part III / Victori a Johnson -- On opera and society (assuming a relationship) / Herbert L indenberger -- Symbolic domination and contestation in French music : s hifting the paradigm from Adorno to Bourdieu / Jane F. Fulcher -- Rewri ting history from the losers' point of view : French grand opera and mo dernity / Antoine Hennion -- Conclusion : towards a new understanding o f the history of opera? / Thomas Ertman.

Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2009. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book]) ([Cambrid ge studies in opera]) Mode of access: Intranet.