The author of the National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Echo Maker, Richard Powers “may well be one of the smartest novelists now writing

This book introduces a new perspective on Claudio Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607), a work widely regarded as the 'first great opera', by exploring the influence of th

In Orfeo’s Last Act, set in 17th-century Italy, Monteverdi rewrites 'Orfeo's' ending with Salamone Rossi's help. The original was lost. In modern East Anglia,

A detailed study of the earliest opera to have gained a foothold in the modern repertoire, the book begins with a historical section in which all the known evid