Networking Operatic Italy by Francesca Vella (review)

Abstract

works, such channels were never represented as the primary motivations for his musical creativity. Mathew concludes this final section of his study with a compelling rumination on the implications of this new framing of Haydn and his cultural–economic contexts for current and future scholarship on eighteenth-century music. The foregoing summary can provide only the most skeletal overview of Mathew’s book, whose relatively modest length masks a study of vast scope and exceptional scholarly weight. Useful or stimulating historical details as well as thought-provoking critical and analytical observations can be found throughout its chapters, and many intriguing references will spur even informed readers to visit and revisit the study’s expansive bibliography. Unfortunately, the overall readability of the text is hindered at too many turns by its arrangement in discursive paragraphs of arguably excessive length. But such concerns need not detract from the value of the study. Its deeply researched reframing of Haydn’s creative life and its cultural–economic contexts, along with its implications for rethinking our perspective on the unfolding of music history between the eras of the Enlightenment and romanticism, warrants much attention, as well as further engagement on the part of those involved in research and teaching on this pivotal span of Western music history.