Books about composers and their music by non-musicians are usually viewed with mistrust, especially when the subject is first and foremost a composer of opera – a form which lends itself to all manner of ignorant fantasising by the musical layman. The present study, however, is an exception to the rule. Gabriele Baldini makes up for his lack of technical knowledge by a life-long familiarity with the works which he discusses, a wide acquaintance with opera in general, and – most important of all – a thorough understanding of the problems of ‘music theatre’. Add to this a lively but well-disciplined mind, an immense culture and a direct and economical prose style; and the result, as may be imagined, is a book packed on every page with stimulating and provocative theories and observations. Its most serious shortcoming is its incompleteness (it stops short near the beginning of La forza del destino). Baldini on Falstaff would have been worth much.

The book cannot be recommended to those in search of an orthodoxy. Many of the judgements are idiosyncratic, some even perverse; none are – to put it vulgarly – ‘half baked’. We purists may deplore his defence of the theatrical habit of slicing cabalettas in half; but, having read it, while still retaining our preference in the matter, we may wonder whether the practice is quite as damaging to the musical architecture as is sometimes claimed.