This limited edition large format book portrays 22 great European opera houses with stunning images by the world renowned photographer, Ahmet Ertug. The book commences with Classical, Baroque and Rococo theaters - miraculous early survivors - from Palladio's exquisite Teatro Olimpico, Vicenza, the forerunner of later theaters, to the charming court theaters at Drottningholm in Stockholm, and the beautiful Margrave's Opera House, Bayreuth and San Carlo in Naples. The grand nineteenth-century opera houses portrayed include the Paris Opera House (Palais Garnier), the rebuilt Teatro La Fenice, Venice, and Prague State Opera. Finally, the book portrays recent architectural masterpieces by some of the world's leading architects including opera houses at Valencia, Lyon and Oslo. To accompany Ertug's remarkable photography, Michael Forsyth describes the architecture of each opera house and its social and musical history, including stories of human passion and intrigue that they can tell. Forsyth begins with an introduction that traces the rise of opera, the evolution of opera house architecture, and the musical and social demands of different nations and periods, with the remarkable effects these had on opera house acoustics.