"Viva Opera! brings together Patricia Hurleys life-long love of Italian opera, language, literature, places and people together with the desire to take readers and travellers on an enriching journey, to enhance their experience of this great art form along with the understanding of Italy and the Italians and how it all came about. There is more to opera than just going to the opera performance. A selection of the great richness of Italian opera history and traditions takes the journey from Venice to Sicily through cities and towns where major opera developments took place, where theatres and places associated with the great composers and interpreters of their music are explored. Composers and performers are placed in the context of their times since 1600 and the beginnings, in Florence, of opera as it is now known, and their lives set against backgrounds of political upheavals, wars, plagues, famines, earthquakes, as well as major artistic movements. Their personalities are revealed, their lives and loves, their stories great divas like Maria Callas, romantic tenors like Enrico Caruso and the enigmatic castrati"--Publishers description.