Originally published in 1964, this study sets Mozart, especially his five most celebrated operas (Il serraglio, The marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and The magic flute) in the context of Enlightenment thought and literature, written by an author whose erudition is the natural expression of her profound affinity for the period. For this new edition the author has revised numerous passages and has written a new preface focusing on Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito.

To illuminate Mozart’s original intentions as fully as possible, Brigid Brophy explores areas of comparative social as well as intellectual history, and the history of sexuality, in order to illustrate the fundamental differences between Mozart’s age of Classicism and our own post-Romanticism.

Reviewing the first edition, John Warrack wrote:
‘It is nothing but welcome to have a non-musician of such intelligence seeing so far into the operas, taking them as seriously as Shakespeare’s plays … at the core of Miss Brophy’s argument lies a firm, articulate insistence on their importance, not as a diversion, but as a central fact of our civilization’ (Sunday Telegraph).

Published by Libris in 1988