Inventing the Opera House: Theater Architecture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. Eugene J. Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xviii + 330 pp. $54.99.
iron gate leading to the chapel succeeds in obscuring the relevant images on the frescoed wall. The reader is left to wonder whether the findings in these essays apply to other Italian contexts as well. The book could have been improved as amore coherent whole with increased editorial intervention. But this does not detract from the excellence of individual essays that represent important and inspiring contributions, creating challenges for further scholarship.