The gilded stage : a social history of opera / Daniel Snowman.

Down the road from Arianna to Zauberflöte (c. 1600-1800). The birth of Italian opera
The opera business, Italian style
Opera crosses the Alps and the Channel
Cultural confluence in Mozart's Vienna
Revolution and Romanticism, c. 1800-1860. Napoleon and Beethoven
After Napoleon: opera as politics, art, and business
Opera reaches New York and the wider frontier
L'Opéra
Fires of London
Opera Resurgens (c. 1860-1900). Culture and politics in Central and Eastern Europe
New York's Gilded Age
Prima la donna
The lion tamers: the ascendancy of the conductor
Opera in war and peace (c. 1900-1950). Opera goes West
Spreading the message
Repercussions of war
Opera under the dictators
Total war. The globalization of opera (1945-)
Emerging from apocalypse
Building opera in America
Opera goes global
New ways of presenting old works
The show must go on.