This captivating book--the first of its kind--will appeal to scholars of literature, music, theater, and modernity as well as to sophisticated opera lovers everywhere.

Richard Begam is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Samuel Beckett and the End of Modernity and the coeditor of Modernism and Colonialism: British and Irish Literature, 1899-1939.Matthew Wilson Smith is an associate professor of German studies and theater and performance studies at Stanford University. He is the author of The Total Work of Art: From Bayreuth to Cyberspace and the editor of Georg Büchner: The Major Works.