ABSTRACT
Refutes the scholarly discussions that stress the “tenacity with which Rossinian procedures” of formal structure held sway throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. Balthazar studies the duets of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi from 1815 to 1850, finding that “musical, poetic, and dramatic design changed substantially during this period in ways that point toward the breakdown of archetypal schemas and the concurrent rise of structural continuity in the second half of the century.”
