Contents -- Editorial Preface by Patricia Williams -- Introduction by Michael Tanner -- 1 The Nature of Opera: Entry for The New Grove Dictionary of Opera -- 2 Mozart's Comedies and the Sense of an Ending -- 3 Mozart's Figaro -- 4 Don Giovanni as an Idea -- 5 Passion and Cynicism -- 6 Rather Red than Black -- 7 Tristan and Time -- 8 The Elusiveness of Pessimism -- 9 Wagner and the Transcendence of Politics -- 10 L'Envers des destinées -- 11 Manifest Artifice -- 12 Comments on Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss by Paul Robinson -- 13 The Marriage and the Flute -- 14 ˇ Janácek's Modernism: Doing Less with More in Music and Philosophy -- 15 Authenticity and Re-creation: Musicology, Performance and Production -- 16 Naïve and Sentimental Opera Lovers -- Acknowledgments -- Index of Names and Works.