The chapter headings of Link's intriguingly titled Poetics of Handel's Operas hint at the nature of this extraordinary volume: Song, Time, Orchestra, Character, and Storytelling. Taking full advantage of all we have learned about Handel's operas over the past half-century, from the likes of Winton Dean et al, Link goes beyond facts and figures to focus, not on the what, but on the how, and not from the point of view of the composer alone but from his relationship with his audience-on the expressive contract established between them. By engaging a variety of critical strategies drawn from literary, film, and dramatic theory, Link brilliantly illuminates Handel's storytelling in ways that can be applied to operas of any period, including our own. * Ellen Rosand, author of Opera in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Creation of a Genre * The Poetics of Handel's Operas offers a wholly new analytic system based on narrative storytelling that will surely have a strong impact on Handel scholarship - and also has the potential to mark a turning point in the study and performance of opera seria. A seminal work. * Ellen T. Harris, Class of 1949 Professor of Music Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology *
