The Medici wedding festivities of 1589 (de'Rossi) -- Pietro Bardi on the birth of opera -- L'euridice, the second opera (Buonarroti, Rinuccini, Peri, Caccini) -- Cavalieri's Rappresentatione di anima, et di corpo (Guidotti, Cavalieri) -- Monteverdi criticizes a libretto -- Sant'Alessio at the Barberini Palace, Rome (Rospigliosi, Bouchard) -- Opera comes to Venice and goes public (Ivanovich) -- Lully is granted a monopoly on opera in French (Colbert, Lully) -- The Grand siècle absorbs the Tragédie en musique (Perrault, La Fontaine, Boileau) -- Saint-Évremond's views on opera -- The first English operas (Dryden) -- Handel's Rinaldo at the Haymarket Theatre (Hill, G. Rossi, Addison, Steele) -- Pier Jacopo Martello on opera (1715) -- The Président de Brosses in Italy (1739) -- Metastasio on setting dramatic recitative to music -- From Rousseau's Confessions -- The war of the buffoons (d'Holbach) -- Interlude: a traveling company (G. Gozzi) -- Operatic reform in Vienna: Gluck and Calzabigi -- Gluck in Paris (Meister) -- Mozart at work on Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail -- Grétry's Richard coeur-de-lion (Meister, Grétry) -- The making of Le nozze di figaro (L. and W.A. Mozart, Da Ponte) -- Kierkegaard's Don Giovanni -- Fidelio in 1806 (Rockel) -- Berlioz's Estimate of Spontini -- E.T.A. Hoffmann on "music drama that springs from the heart" -- The first performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia (Righetti-Giorgi) -- Der Freischütz: a German triumph (M.M. von Weber) -- Parisian grand opera: Auber's La Muette de Portici as seen by Wagner -- Interlude: Madame pasta (Hunt) -- Verdi's own story of how Nabucco was composed -- Verdi's operatic style analyzed by a contemporary (Basevi) -- Wagner on the evolution of his style -- Wagner's theory of drama -- Divergent reactions to Boris Godunov (Laroche, Stasov) -- Tchaikovsky on Eugene Onegin -- Nietzsche vs. Wagner -- Verdi's Otello (Boito, Verdi, Morelli) -- Interlude: Verdi and Wagner in Vienna (J. Sulzer) -- Verismo (Verga) -- Four men at work on La bohéme (Illica, Puccini, Ricordi, Giacosa) -- Pelléas et Mélisande (Mauclair, journalist, Debussy) -- Strauss and Hofmannsthal work on Der Rosenkavalier -- Duke Bluebeard's castle (Ballász) -- Busoni and the reinstatement of disbelief -- In defense of Kát'a Kabanová (Stuart) -- Alban Berg on Wozzeck -- Brecht on "epic opera" -- Shostakovich and the Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk Debacle (Shostakovich, Pravda) -- Interlude: an Italian claque (Montale) -- Peter Grimes in postwar London (Edm. Wilson) -- Stravinsky, Auden, and The rake's progress -- A first reaction to Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites (Mila) -- Einstein on the beach by Philip Glass (Page) -- John Adams on Nixon in China.