(Dis)embodying Myths in Ancien Regime Opera: Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Throughout the Ancien R璽egime, mythology played a vital role in opera, defining such epoch-making works as Claudio Monteverdi's 'La favola d'Orfeo' (1607) and Christoph Gluck's 'Iphig璽enie en Tauride' (1779). The operatic presence of the Greco-Roman godsand heroes was anything but unambiguous or unproblematic, however. This book highlights myth's chameleonic life in the Italian 'dramma per musica' and French 'trag璽edie en musique' of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.