“With her perceptive readings, Esse illuminates the role of the improvvisatrice in nineteenth-century opera and the musical dimensions of improvisation. Revealing that nineteenth-century authorship was a fluid combination of creative, performative, collaborative, and contingent elements, she challenges an accepted narrative about the increasing dominance of the written work and the composer’s authority. This fascinating study is deeply relevant to literary-cultural studies as well as to musicology.”

Angela Esterhammer, University of Toronto

“Esse’s new book makes a vital contribution to the continuing debates surrounding nineteenth-century Italian opera: it offers us important new ways of looking at the repertory and will surely take its place among the very best of recent operatic scholarship.”

Roger Parker, King’s College London

“Esse argues brilliantly that the relationship between written and oral traditions is far more complicated than has hitherto been acknowledged. Her approach to this subject matter is unique, tracing the figure of Sappho, an ‘iconic improviser,’ through a series of operas and narratives. This book adds critical new perspective to the field of opera studies, illuminating how prima donnas helped shape and ‘create’ the musical and artistic environment in which they worked.”

Hilary Poriss, Northeastern University

"This work offers interesting insights into the role that female performative improvisatory techniques had on the creation of Italian and French opera in the 19th century. . . . Esse includes lengthy discussions of a number of unjustly neglected or underperformed operas, and—in what is probably a scholarly first—a reference to Dr. Seuss that is as delightful as it is unironic."

Choice

"In Esse’s retelling, Sappho comes alive again within her sexual and creative transgressions—no reading against required. This definition of queerness arguably better fits the political needs of the contemporary moment and offers more representation of lived, queer experiences. It is also, I think, something of a call to arms for musicologists, asking us to embrace Sapphic transgression to reconsider how we ourselves do our work."

Notes