Prof. William Rothstein’s long-awaited book, The Musical Language of Italian Opera, 1813–1859, has been published by Oxford University Press. Taking an eclectic analytical approach in examining works by Rossini, Bellini, Mercadante, Donizetti, and Verdi and, Meyerbeer, Rothstein uses ideas originating in several centuries, from the sixteenth to the twenty-first, to argue that operatic music can be heard not only as passionate vocality but also in terms of musical forms, pitch structures, and rhythmic pattern
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