Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Opera and the Built Environment

Opera and the Built Environment

Vasilyeva, Laura

Paperback

Series: Opera Lab: Explorations in History, Technology, and Performa

Architecture HistoryOperaMusic Reference

ISBN10: 0226844463
ISBN13: 9780226844466
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: Nov 19 2025
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.42 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
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.

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