| An art that involves two different facets is not easy to appreciate. Opera represents just such a case, since although it was considered a theatrical genre in the eighteenth century, today it is approached almost exclusively from the musical angle. Both viewpoints are equally limiting, however; an opera cannot be apprehended in terms of its libretto or its score alone. Once nineteenth-century musicians had acquired the status of “artists”, the exegeses of their work became more and more widespread. As a result, the general public was able to follow the development of opera from a musical point of view. The same cannot be said for its development as a literary genre, however. The present article hopes to partially remedy the situation by exploring a period when opera’s two dimensions reached a short-lived equilibrium. |
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