Production, consumption and political function of seventeenth-century opera

This article was first planned in 1976. It owes its existence to Pierluigi Petrobelli who, charged with organising a round table on seventeenth-century music drama for the Twelfth Congress of the International Musicological Society, Berkeley 1977, invited the authors to prepare a paper as a focus for discussion and offered them constant encouragement throughout its preparatory stages. It is our pleasant duty to mention that during the time of preparation of the paper Lorenzo Bianconi held scholarships from the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani and the Istituto Storico Germanico of Rome.