Opera and Modern Spectatorship in Late Nineteenth-Century Italy

At the turn of the twentieth century Italian opera participated to the making of a modern spectator. The Ricordi stage manuals testify to the need to harness the effects of operatic performance, activating opera''s capacity to cultivate a public. This book considers how four operas and one film deal with their public: one that in Boito''s Mefistofele is entertained by special effects, or that in V...