Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker's book "A History of Opera" is the first complete new history of opera in sixty years, now available in paperback with a revised second edition. "The Times Literary Supplement" describes it as the best monographic work on the subject. Why has opera captivated and fascinated audiences for centuries? Abbate and Parker answer this question in their careful and provocative retelling of the history of opera, examining its development, the means by which it communicates, and its social role. In a newly revised version with an Expanded exploration of opera as an institution in the twenty-first century, this book analyzes the tensions that have sustained opera for 400 years: between words and music, character and singer, indifference and absorption. Abbate and Parker argue that, although the most popular and enduring works of the genre were almost all written in a distant European past, opera continues to transform the viewer with its enduring power.