Seeing Opera Anew

<p>What people ultimately want from opera audience research suggests is to be absorbed in a story that engages their feelings even moves them deeply and that may lead them to insights about life and perhaps themselves.</p><p>How and why can this combination of music and drama do that? What causes people to be moved by opera? How is it that people may become more informed about living and their own lives? <em>Seeing Opera Anew </em>addresses these fundamental questions.</p><p>Most approaches to opera present information solely from the humanities providing musical literary and historical interpretations but this book offers a “stereo” perspective adding insights from the sciences closely related to human life including evolutionary biology psychology anthropology and neuroscience. It can be hoped that academic specialists less familiar with the science will find points of interest in this book’s novel approach and that open-minded students and inquisitive opera-goers will be stimulated by its “cultural and biological perspective.”</p>