Expressions such as ‘author’, ‘work’, ‘text’ and ‘repertory’ are used constantly in writings about Italian opera; they stand for concepts that seem uncontroversial and unproblematic. However, these terms acquired the value we currently grant them only through a long process, one inextricably linked to the century-long formation of an Italian ‘operatic repertory’ between about 1750 and 1850. At the beginning of this period, a select number of literary texts received new musical clothing each time they were revived; by its end, the text of a successful opera could not be set to music again, because music and text were indissolubly linked in the audience's perception. There were exceptions, of course, and the process of change was gradual and differed according to genre: in the late eighteenth century some drammi giocosi had European careers that lasted as long as thirty years, much longer than the most successful drammi per musica. What is more, although we can speak of a ‘repertory’. with reference to the whole of Europe or to Italy, if we narrow the focusto a single city we may have to move into the nineteenth century to amass a body of works sufficiently large to merit the term. However, the fact that this process lasted for a century, far fromdiminishing its importance, is in one sense proof of its relevance. for an understanding of Italian opera that fully embraces its cultural, social and political context, ‘facts’ will indeed last as long as a century.

In 1823, Alessandro Manzoni engaged a continuing debate over the merits of ‘Aristotelian’ unities of time and place with his Lettre à M. C*** sur l'unité de temps et de lieu dans la tragédie, a manifesto that synthesises and amplifies earlier polemics by Berchet, Pellico and Visconti. Dramatic expression, coherence and realism, Manzoni argued, are best served by giving priority to unity of action while ignoring the traditional restrictions of time and setting. Although discontinuities might occur between adjacent scenes, the focus on cause and effect and the exclusion of unrelated incidents would provide a coherence that had previously depended on physical and temporal proximity. Manzoni suggested that formal preconceptions be set aside and the action allowed to shape dramatic design. Characters could be introduced throughout a play rather than together in the first act, their motivations and goals allowed to evolve as the situation unfolds. These shifts would encourage writers to cultivate motifs other than love intrigues, which had traditionally held sway because they took little time to develop. In particular, historical plays could enact all important events instead of only the climax, and depict true causes and resolutions rather than ones invented to fit conventional constraints.

Theodor Adorno thought Parsifal unique, in many respects incongruous when compared with Wagner's earlier operas and music dramas. In a 1956 essay, ‘Zur Partitur des Parsifal’ (‘Concerning the Score of Parsifal’), he noted the ‘continually strange newness’ of Wagner's last work, concluding: ‘From out of the waning of his original inventive powers, Wagner's force produces the virtue of a late style; a style that, according to Goethe's dictum, withdraws from appearance’. More recently, Werner Breig paused appreciatively over Adorno's remark about the ‘continually strange newness’, but pursued a different argument. Breig claims that Parsifal was recapitulatory, stylistically homogeneous with the earlier works, and he is supported by Wagner's assertion to Cosima that he had written ‘nothing new’ since Tristan (CWD II, 26 March 1879), a conviction redolent of one the composer had earlier expressed (albeit in entirely different circumstances) in a letter to Mathilde Wesendonck of 2 May 1860: ‘I can now only repeat myself … I have no other significant characteristics to offer’. Breig summarises his position in the Wagner Handbook: ‘The musical structure of Parsifal contains no fundamentally new elements, but rather follows directly upon the achievements of the Ring and Tristan’, thus nodding to the Wagner who cheerfully confessed having ‘take[n] up the old paint pot’ of the Tristan style for Act II of Parsifal (CWD II, 5 April 1878).

In Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, Brutus Jones undertakes a fatal flight through the jungle, near the end of which he stumbles into a clearing and ‘incoherently mumbles’: ‘What is – dis place? Seems like – seems like I ben heah befo’.’ He's right – he has been there. Jones's frantic run has brought him full-circle, leading him to roughly the same place where he began. However, Jones retraces his steps in more man just O'Neill's drama: he repeatedly rushes through die same jungle in the numerous adaptations of the play that followed its successful 1920 première. The first progeny of die Emperor – Louis Gruenberg's opera performed at the Metropolitan and Dudley Murphey's film starring Paul Robeson – appeared in 1933. Surprisingly, given die dated and, to present-day audiences, offensive racial depictions, the work is still being translated into other media, including Sven-David Sandström's 1985 opera and a 1986 dance version by Donald McKayle set to music by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.