Pasticcio Opera in Britain

History and Context

Peter Morgan Barnes

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Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Manchester University Press
20 January 2026

Music; Western "classical" music; Opera; History: specific events & topics

This study overturns twentieth-century thinking about pasticcio opera. This radical way of creating opera formed a counterweight, even a relief, to the trenchant masculinity of literate culture in the seventeenth century. It undermined the narrowing of nationalism in the eighteenth century, and was an act of gross sacrilege against the cult of Romantic genius in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, it found itself on the wrong side of copyright law. However, in the twenty-first century it is enjoying a tentative revival. This book redefines pasticcio as a method rather than a genre of opera and aligns it with other art forms which also created their works from pre-existing parts, including sculpture. A pasticcio opera is created from pre-existing music and text, thus flying in face of insistence on originality and creation by a solo genius.

By: Peter Morgan Barnes
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 576g
ISBN: 9781526195494
ISBN 10: 1526195496
Pages: 416
Publication Date: 20 January 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction 1 The creative process 2 Origins and development 3 Pasticcio opera: the golden age 4 Rumours of death greatly exaggerated: 1780s to 1870s 5 Survival and revival -- .

Peter Morgan Barnes is a research fellow in opera at the University of Bristol and currently a heritage researcher at Swansea University

Reviews for Pasticcio Opera in Britain: History and Context

This history of pasticcio as a practice is a veritable tour de force. Morgan Barnes tells a compelling story that combines detailed archival research with interdisciplinary virtuosity and imaginative realisation. It presents an important strand of opera history that has been forgotten and misunderstood for too long, and opens up new ways of thinking about its relationship to wider culture and politics and to performance history. —Professor Sarah Hibberd, Hugh Badock Chair of Music, University of Bristol -- .