"Dramma per musica" - the most usual term for Italian serious opera from the 17th to the early 19th century - was a modern enlightened form of theatre that presented a unified, artistically designed, dramatic enactment of human stories, expressed by the voice and underscored by the orchestra. This book illustrates the diversity of this baroque art form and explains how it has given us opera as we know it. Reinhard Strohm introduces the concept and history of dramma per musica and then examines the contemporary reception and environment of this operatic tradition, analyzing its social and repertorial patterns and relating it to theories concerning French spoken drama and Italian libretto reform. In describing the principles observed by poets, composers and performers, Strohm discusses such central concepts of theory and practices as verisimilitude, decorum, gesture and rhetoric. He also decodes various works, including Handel's "Ariodante", opera by Hasse and stage works featuring the Earl of Essex. Throughout the book, Strohm surveys traditions of the spoken theatre and pays special attention to the subject matter of the librettos, as well as to drama theory, stage action, patronage, political history, and ideology. His account takes opera houses in Rome, Naples, Venice, Hamburg, Dresden, Vienna, Madrid, London and Warsaw; he also follows one character of the drama tradition across the European stages for over two centuries.