Pagodas in Play: China on the Eighteenth-Century Italian Opera Stage

Pagodas in Play examines the representation of China in nine Italian operas of the eighteenth century. It focuses specifically on libretti, analyzing them as texts produced in a variety of interpenetrating cultural contexts: the general European fascination with the Middle Kingdom; developments in Italian literary, theatrical, and operatic realms; Enlightenment ideologies; and the heterogeneity of the Italian states. With exemplary scholarship Adrienne Ward explores how Italians appropriate...