The Lyric Myth of Voice

"With wide-ranging and precise interdisciplinary scholarship and impressive insight into the many interconnections of emotion, voice, and political development, Jessica Peritz makes a major contribution to our understanding of not just eighteenth-century Italian music but also European cultural and political history. A real delight."—Martha C. Nussbaum, Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics, University of Chicago

"Written elegantly and with flair, The Lyric Myth of Voice does much to argue for the value of Peritz's sources and the importance of long-neglected Italian cultural practices of the late Enlightenment. Her close readings of material are lovely, excellent, stimulating, illuminating—everything wonderful."—Ellen Lockhart, author of Animation, Plasticity, and Music in Italy, 1770–1830

"This imaginative book begins with the arresting idea of voices as sites where bodies are buried. By carefully listening to the timbres of the archive, Peritz excavates the sounds of eighteenth-century singers of Italian opera to tell an important story about the emergence of modern conceptions of song and personhood. Reaching backward to Homeric myths and forward to contemporary scholarly discourses, The Lyric Myth of Voice simultaneously reveals new details of individual singers and reimagines theoretical understandings of the voice. Like Carolyn Abbate's work on nineteenth-century opera, this book will breathe new life into opera studies, voice studies, and musicology all told."—Bonnie Susan Gordon, author of Monteverdi's Unruly Women