Kerman, Joseph: Opera as Drama. Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, January 2006, University of California Press, 230 pages
Levin, David J.: Unsettling Opera. Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner and Zemlinsky, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 250 pages
Abbate, Carolyn and Roger Parker: A History of Opera, New York: Norton 2012:
"Preface and acknowledgments" (xiii-xix)
"Introduction" (1-35)
"Opera buffa and Mozart’s line of beauty" (117-144)
"Singing and speaking before 1800" (145-166)
Steptoe, Andrew: The Mozart-da Ponte Operas. The Cultural and Musical Background to Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, Oxford 2001; Clarendon Press. 270 pages