books.google.co.uk - Ellen Rosand shows how opera, born of courtly entertainment, took root in the special social and economic environment of seventeenth-century Venice and there developed the stylistic and aesthetic characteristics we recognize as opera today. With ninety-one music examples, most of them complete pieces...http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Opera_in_Seventeenth_Century_Venice.html?id=OIldosPbzukC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareOpera in Seventeenth-Century Venice
