Cesti's Orontea (Innsbruck, 1656), one of the most celebrated operas of the seventeenth century, is considered a significant antecedent of eighteenth-century opera buffa; the important role of Gelone is deemed one of the first basso buffo roles in opera history. Yet this view is based on incomplete and problematic historical data. This article reexamines that data and develops strategies for handling the text-critical problems that plague seventeenth-century opera. It concludes that Cesti probably designed Gelone for an alto – the most common voice type for buffo servants in the mid-late seventeenth century – and warns against using eighteenth-century models to interpret the seventeenth-century repertory.

The essay analyses the Turkish mode in Mozart's output, discovering some unexpected examples, particularly Don Giovanni's aria ‘Fin ch'han dal vino’, whose uncommon sonority, obsessive rhythm and harmonic poverty evoke this topos. Don Giovanni may present Turkish features because his character coincides with eighteenth-century Western European views of the Turks as a threat to the established order and inclined to reckless sensuality. The romantic view of Don Giovanni as an ideal figure may also be connected with eighteenth-century thinking about ‘orientals’ as the representatives of utopia.

I propose that certain ‘Japanese’ elements of Puccini's Madama Butterfly have cultural analogues that support a reading of the opera as more profoundly authentic than has usually been argued. My discussion begins with the house, the most basic scenic component of the opera, and develops via a number of interrelated issues: the Japanese home as the center of the life cycle, Puccini's choice of the home as his single set, and finally, Butterfly's ‘Vigil’ as the central event in an unfolding home-based life-cycle that raises issues of ritual and ceremony corresponding to values of the geisha culture.

‘La maledizione di Fausto’ A new book on a famous figure from the past should challenge the previous critical outlook; that much we may take for granted. However, when the critical tradition is as odd, polarized, and opinionated as is Puccini's, difficulties arise, especially over the stance to be assumed. Although staples in the repertoires of opera houses around the world, Puccini's operas seem to inspire a sort of guilty enjoyment that gives way either to harsh criticism (if not outright dismissal) or to strenuous defense.