By making systematic use of the mostly unpublished Opera Archive, Mead fills in the missing links to previous investigations and unlocks the significance of thi

In 1866, when the ballet La Source debuted, the public at the Paris Opera may have been content to dream about its setting in the verdant Caucasus, its exotic C

The range of possibilities for what was termed a ball in eighteenth-century France was quite considerable. At one extreme were the carefully regulated bals par�