librettistics

The brief comparative excursions into the >remaining< Italian librettists are both rare and unsystematic, not to mention the entire European librettistics.

1970, Ennio Stipčević, “Review: Musica e storia tra Medio Evo e Età moderna”, in International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, volume 22, number 2

Attention is given firstly to arguments within the system which generate the typical and frequently mentioned literary defects of libretto texts, but is also directed at texts and groups of texts to which prejudices about librettistics as a second-rate dramaturgy cannot be applied.

2000, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music, page 125

For this reason, the attention I devote to the libretto might seem out of proportion to its status in the opera as a whole, yet I feel encouraged in this direction by the recent interest kindled by librettistics, a subject for which we owe much to our German and Italian colleagues.

2005, Nelly Valtat-Comet, “From Novella to Opera: Dominick Argento's The Aspern Papers”, in E-rea. Revue électronique d'études sur le monde anglophone