Osmin's Rage

In his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical—as opposed to a dramatic—necessity for opera during...

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In his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical—as opposed to a dramatic—necessity for opera during this period and that Mozart's Idomeneo is properly enjoyed and judged only when listeners are attuned to its seventeenth and eighteenth-century forebears.