Dreaming with Open Eyes: Opera, Aesthetics, and Perception in Arcadian Rome

Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth—century Italian opera, contextualizing the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. Ayana O. Smith reevaluates significant aspects of the Arcadian reform aesthetic and establishes a historically informed method of opera criticism for modern scholars and interpreters. Unfolding in a narrative fashion, the text explores facets of the philosophica...