Opera and the Built Environment

The first book to examine the classic Italian opera house in a global context.

In Opera and the Built Environment, music scholar Laura Vasilyeva considers the remarkable mass construction of opera houses around the world since the 1800s and the no-less-remarkable bids to standardize the architectural features of their interiors across this vast theatrical infrastructure. Now known as the teatro all’italiana, this style of architecture--made most famous by Milan’s Teatro alla Scala--is characterized by auditoria with tiers of stacked boxes and a dominant red hue.

With attention to the sensuous dimensions of their auditoria, from their surfaces to their atmospheres to their acoustics and thresholds, Vasilyeva reveals the calculated reasons these theaters took on the form they did. The result is a book that reveals unknown associations between the Italian opera house and matters of environmental destruction, empire, and belonging, showing us new and unexpected patterns in how opera connects to the world we know.

Laura Vasilyeva is associate professor of musicology at John Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in a range of journals, from the Cambridge Opera Journal to The Opera Quarterly. This is her first book.