Giovanni Battista Rubini (1794-1854) was a legendary tenor and the first 19th-century non-castrati male singer to become an international star of opera. The pre

“Opera is enjoyed only by those who know something about it. This is the idea behind this book... It was written for people who love opera and want to know a

Unscrupulous, devilishly ambitious and undeniably charismatic, Domenico Barbaja was the most celebrated Italian impresario of the early 1800s and one of the mos

Everyone is familiar with the words diva or prima donna, which have come to mean a (usually) outrageous operatic soprano, but there was a time when the star of

How does a Romantic composer approach the poetry he sets: as raw material to be remade, a pretext for self-expression, a sanctified artefact, or a message to be