Opera and SovereigntyPerformed throughout Europe during the eighteenth century, Italian heroic opera, or opera seria, was the centurys most significant and popular musical art form, engaging such figures as Handel, Haydn, and Mozart. In Opera and Sovereignty, Martha Feldman takes a groundbreaking anthropological approach to the study of the genre. Employing a widely interdisciplinary argument that opera seria must be understood in light of the periods social and political