Illustrations

  1.   1. Listening to opera in The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
  2.   2. Audrey Hepburn at the opera in Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957)
  3.   3. A reconstruction of the original Orfeo venue in Mantua (Courtesy of the Musée de Musique, Paris)
  4.   4. Giovanni Carlo Coppola’s Le nozze degli dei, etching by Stefano della Bella, 1637 (© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel / Vera & Arturo Schwarz Collection of Dada and Surrealist Art / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  5.   5. Renata Pokupić as Irene from Tamerlano at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2010 (© 2010 Royal Opera House / Catherine Ashmore)
  6.   6. William Hogarth, The Bad Taste of the Town, February 1724 (© Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  7.   7. William Hogarth, The Castrati, engraved print, 1726 (© Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  8.   8. Portrait of Rosalie Levasseur, engraving by Noël Pruneau, 1790
  9.   9. Pauline Viardot as Orphée, carte de visite photograph, 1859 (TCS 25 (Viardot, Pauline), Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University)
  10. 10. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, portrait by Barbara Krafft, 1819 (© Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Wien, Austria / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  11. 11. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, silverpoint drawing by Doris Stock, 1789 (© Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  12. 12. Papageno from the Leipzig premiere of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, coloured engraving by Johann Salomon Richter, 1793 (Courtesy of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig)
  13. 13. Sarastro from the Leipzig premiere of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, coloured engraving by Johann Salomon Richter, 1793 (Courtesy of the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig)
  14. 14. Charles Edward Horn as Caspar in Weber’s Der Freischütz, London, 1824 (© Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Great Britain / Lessing Photo Archive)
  15. 15. Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient as Fidelio in Beethoven’s opera, lithograph by W. Sauter, 1823 (© akg-images)
  16. 16. Nineteenth-century portrait of Caroline Ungher (Authors’ collection)
  17. 17. Guillaume Tell apple scene rendered in Sèvres porcelain (© Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Sèvres, Cité de la céramique) / Martine Beck-Coppola)
  18. 18. Mickey Mouse conducting William Tell in The Band Concert, 1935
  19. 19. Natalie Dessay as Lucia in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Metropolitan Opera, 2007 (© Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera)
  20. 20. Die Heldentenöre, caricature by Gustave Doré, 1860s (Authors’ collection)
  21. 21. A Ball at the Opera, colour lithograph by Eugène Charles François Guérard, undated (© Musée de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library)
  22. 22. Liebig advertising card showing Verdi’s Rigoletto (Authors’ collection)
  23. 23. Verdi’s funeral procession, Milan, 26 February 1901 (© akg-images / Interfoto)
  24. 24. Stage design by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph-François-Désire Thierry for Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, engraving published in L’illustration, May 1865
  25. 25. Wagner’s Tannhäuser, Metropolitan Opera, 2004 (© Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera)
  26. 26. A Treasury of Grand Opera, Simon and Schuster, 1946 (Authors’ collection)
  27. 27. Cover for the sheet music of Faust, 1931 (Authors’ collection)
  28. 28. Risë Stevens advertising Chesterfield cigarettes, 1948 (Authors’ collection)
  29. 29. Film poster for Aida with Sophia Loren in the title role (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) (© akg-images)
  30. 30. Emma Calvé as Carmen, nineteenth-century postcard (Authors’ collection)
  31. 31. Auber’s Fra Diavolo, lithograph by John Brandard from a photo by Herbert Watkins, c. 1858 (Authors’ collection)
  32. 32. Caricature of Jacques Offenbach for La Lune, colour engraving by André Gill, 4 November 1866
  33. 33. Carl Cochems as Hagen from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, postcard, c. 1910 (Authors’ collection)
  34. 34. ‘Verdi the Latin Wagner’, caricature by Carl von Stur in Der Floh, 13 February 1887 (Courtesy of the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale)
  35. 35. A page of Janáček’s sketches for the original 1904 version of Jenůfa (BmJA – Janáček Archive, Moravian Regional Museum, Brno: Music History Division)
  36. 36. Enrico Caruso as Cavaradossi in Puccini’s Tosca, Metropolitan Opera House, 1903. Photograph by Aimé Dupont (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera Archives)
  37. 37. Geraldine Farrar as Suor Angelica in Puccini’s Il trittico, Metropolitan Opera, 1918 (Courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera Archives)
  38. 38. Lauritz Melchior recording the Prize Song from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger in Two Sisters from Boston (Henry Koster, 1946)
  39. 39. Costume design by Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) for Mélisande in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, Metropolitan Opera, 1927 (© 2012 Digital Image The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource / Scala, Florence)
  40. 40. Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannstahl, silhouette by Willi Bithorn, 1914 (© akg-images)
  41. 41. Nadja Michael and Duncan Meadows in Strauss’s Salome, Royal Opera House, 2008 (© Clive Barda)
  42. 42. Cover of the vocal score for Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf, 1927
  43. 43. and 44. Costume designs by Eduard Milen for Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen, National Theatre, Brno, 1924 (Courtesy of Moravian Museum, Brno: Theatre Department)
  44. 45. Still from Le Million (René Clair, 1931)
  45. 46. The ruined Deutsche Volksoper, Hamburg, 1945 (© akg-images)
  46. 47. John Adams, Nixon in China, Metropolitan Opera, 2011 (© Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera)
  47. 48. Benjamin Britten, Peter Grimes, Teatro Regio Torino, 2010 (Courtesy of Teatro Regio Torino – Photo Ramella&Giannese)
  48. 49. Le Sortie de l’Opéra en l’an 2000, hand-coloured lithograph by Albert Robida, c. 1882 (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
  49. 50. The rainbow bridge in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Metropolitan Opera, 2010 (© Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera)