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This thesis explores Verdi reception in Milan during 1859-81, particularly in connection with contemporary notions of italianità. It seeks to shed light on specifically Milanese representations of ‘Italianness’, investigating how attitudes to music, and opera in particular, reflected attempts at constructing and negotiating both local and national identities. By placing Verdi within a larger urban picture, this thesis offers a cultural history – one focused on music and Italian identity – of Milan during the period. The thesis is comprised of four case studies. Chapter One addresses discourse about Verdi and Italian politics during 1859-61, further framing the discussion within a broader historical and historiographical purview. Chapter Two investigates the Milanese premiere of Don Carlo in 1868 in relation to the contemporary spread and perceptions of national monuments. Chapter Three considers the critical reception of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem for Alessandro Manzoni in 1874, suggesting that the binary rhetoric that underpinned the debates was a ‘political’ tool for negotiating musical notions of Italian identity. Finally, Chapter Four examines critical discourse about Verdi-Boito’s revised Simon Boccanegra and the revivals of various operas in Milan in 1881, discussing them in connection with that year’s National Industrial Exhibition and with the interpretative framework of the Operatic Museum. This study overall suggests a revised, more nuanced narrative about late nineteenth-century Verdi, opera and Italy. If, on the one hand, Milan’s contemporary culture maintained a strong awareness of its past, on the other, it was increasingly concerned with defining itself by construing images of the future. Far from representing merely the last epigone of Italy’s past – vocal, ‘melodic’ – musical tradition, Verdi came, in the eyes of Milanese critics, to embody ideas of musical innovation. Concepts of progress and change were indeed as deeply embedded in the contemporary imagination as were concepts of crisis and nostalgia of the past.

This thesis examines four of Franz Schubert's complete operas: Die Zwillingsbrűder D.647, Alfonso und Estrella D.732, Die Verschworenen D.787, and Fierrabras D.796. These works date from the period of 1818-1823, sometimes referred to as Schubert's 'years of crisis'. While this period saw many changes in the composer's personal situation, it is commonly thought that he underwent a process of creative re-evaluation during these years. This was also the period of Schubert's life during which he was most seriously engaged in writing music for the stage. Thus, I argue in this thesis that it is possible to understand these operas as key works within Schubert's stylistic development. Chapter 2 of this thesis studies Adorno's 1928 critique of Schubert and draws out common themes in critical writings about the composer to do with coherence, temporality and tone. These themes are then grounded in various different types of analytical observations about Schubert's emergent style. Chapter 3 examines selected numbers from the four mature operas. Through analysing these works, we find that Schubert's developing approach to form, rhythm, musical 'signs' and other structural devices is evident. Innovations in each of these fields are understood as responses to the various dramatic challenges offered by each of the libretti. Chapter 4 summarises the conclusions of our study of the operas and suggests some possibilities for interpretation of other works which are raised by these analyses.

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My thesis aims to re-evaluate Richard Wagner’s relationship with Paris from his earliest residence (1839-1842) to the Paris Tannhäuser (1861) through the lens of translation in multiple senses of the word. The phenomenon of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French Wagnerism has long attracted diverse interpretations in musicology and cultural history; less well known is Wagner’s own perennial ambition of an operatic success in the “capital city of the nineteenth century” (Walter Benjamin), the better to launch his career on an international platform, and the paradoxical consequences of that ambition upon its failure. My point of departure is twofold: on the one hand, I engage in a number of ideas in the so-called “Wagner debate” as an ongoing philosophical project that has sought to come to terms with the problematic of the composer’s Germanness; and on the other hand, I hope to shed new light on some of these very questions via critical interrogation of hitherto neglected sources, including translations and adaptations between French and German produced or supervised by the composer himself. My argument proceeds in a chronological series of dialectical “moments”, if not in a continuous narrative of linear development: Chapters 1 and 2 concern two different phases of Wagner’s early Paris years, 1839-42, a formative period in his life that has yet to receive sustained investigation; Chapters 3 and 4 examine his view of Paris as it were “at a distance”, respectively his period as Kapellmeister in Dresden and his post-May 1849 exile; finally, in Chapter 5, I offer a genuine reappraisal of Wagner’s much-discussed 1859-1861 Paris period, with particular focus on the 1860 concerts at the Théâtre-Italien and Baudelaire’s Wagner appreciation.

This practice-led investigation explores strategies for addressing extreme events drawn from a contemporary context through the collaborative process of composing opera. In particular, the thesis examines possibilities for managing the emotional impact of such work on the audience through looking beyond the Western tradition at the aesthetics of Japanese Nō theatre and the haiku. It explores the differing functions of words and music, and posits suggestions towards a method of composition designed to develop a more considered, thinking relationship between the members of the audience and the performed opera, where they habitually 'experience intense emotional narratives without being aware of what is at stake, thus without seeming to be accountable' (McClary, in Clément, 1989, xiv). As an exemplum, the author examines the Church Parable, Curlew River, by Benjamin Britten and William Plomer, a collaborative precedent based on the Nō play Sumidagawa, depicting a mother's grief after her child is kidnapped into slavery. The process of this collaboration and the relationship between the form and content of the work are analysed to identify how it has influenced the adaptations completed during the period of research. The investigation has included three collaborations with composers and musicians:  Red Angel, an adaptation of Yasuzo Masumura's 1966 film of the same name as a full length opera set in the Sudanese Civil War of 1991–92, with a full score for scenes 1, 2, 9 and 10 composed by Ayanna Witter-Johnson.  Green Angel, an adaptation as a chamber opera of Alice Hoffman's novella for teenagers written in 2002, the year after 9/11, composed by Dr Lauren Redhead.  I am the ferryman, a meditative film that explores the relationship between words and music in Benjamin Britten's and William Plomer's Curlew River made in collaboration with film maker Lucy Bergman and 'Our Liberated Winter' (Simon Prince – flute, Robin Bowles – piano).