It occurred to me, some way into reading this enormous book, that academic reviewers of composite volumes live in interesting times. So much has changed recently in the dissemination of such volumes. Perhaps the very act of writing ‘a review’ of one of them – of capturing some kind of topic-wide panorama, perhaps with a selection of ‘state of the art’ homilies thrown in – is now irremediably anachronistic. After all, few people except reviewers would conceivably acquire and then read from cover to cover a volume such as this, which retails at £120 ($185) and spreads over 1,200 pages covered with around half a million words. What’s more, the huge variations in tone among the book’s fifty chapters – from, say, Tim Carter’s friendly, all-embracing opening essay, ‘What is Opera?’, to a large contingent of densely musicological, JAMS-aspirant confections, on any number of recondite topics – would surely defeat all but the most dogged and most catholic of consumers. But, in today’s academic world, objections such as this hardly matter. As we all know, the primary readers of these Handbooks (or Companions or Compendiums or Encyclopaedias or Readers; the proliferation of soubriquets itself tells a tale) are no longer those who confront the volume in physical form, but rather those with institutional access to the eBook, who can thus pick and choose among – or be directed to – selected eChapters, with no need to be aware of the ‘real’ book’s massy materiality, let alone any cumulative effect it might have. So what’s a reviewer to do? This one, at some cost to his work schedule and professional well-being, and perhaps in despite of the times, read from beginning to end. He is here to tell the tale. Whether all this reading might possibly promote conclusions about the present state of ‘opera studies’ was a question that occurred with some insistence as my task continued. But before essaying that particular topic, some caveats need to be aired. Of the fifty contributors (the dust jacket’s puff preliminary describes them as ‘fifty of the world’s most respected scholars’), forty are based in either the US (29) or the UK (11). Given the language of the collection, this geographical concentration was probably inevitable; but it does, of course, make for a particular take on the topic,

中文翻译：

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拥抱银行：布罗德纳格的歌剧研究

在我读到这本巨大的书的某种方式上，我想到了复合卷的学术评论家生活在有趣的时代。最近，在传播此类书籍方面发生了很大变化。也许对其中之一撰写“评论”的行为–捕获某种主题范围的全景图，也许加上精选的“最先进的”同性恋人物-现在已经不可避免地过时了。毕竟，除审稿人外，很少有人会想像一本这样的书，然后从封面读起来，该书的零售价为120英镑（约合185美元），分布在1200页上，覆盖约50万字。此外，这本书的五十个章节在语气上也有很大的不同-从蒂姆·卡特的友善，包罗万象的开篇短文“什么是歌剧？”到大量密集的音乐学，在许多隐晦话题上都令人赞叹不已的JAMS甜点必将击败除了最顽强，最天主教徒的消费者之外的所有消费者。但是，在当今的学术世界中，诸如此类的异议几乎无关紧要。众所周知，这些手册的主要读者（或《伴侣》，《纲要》或《百科全书》或《读者》；自慰书的激增本身就说明了一个故事），不再是那些以物理形式面对大量书籍的人，而是那些能够从制度上接触这些书籍的人。这样，电子书就可以在选定的eChapters中进行选择或进行选择，而无需了解“真实”书的大量重要性，更不用说它可能产生的任何累积影响了。那么，审稿人该怎么办？从头到尾都要读这本书，这要花费他的工作日程和专业水平，甚至可能要花很多时间。他在这里讲这个故事。在我的任务继续进行的过程中，所有这些阅读是否可能会得出关于“歌剧研究”当前状态的结论，这是一个必须坚持的问题。但是在提出该特定主题之前，需要说明一些警告。在这50名贡献者中（防尘套的粉扑初步形容他们是“世界上最受尊敬的学者中的50名”），其中40名来自美国（29名）或英国（11名）。考虑到收藏的语言，这种地理上的集中可能是不可避免的。但是，当然，它确实使该主题更具特色，但是在提出该特定主题之前，需要说明一些警告。在这50名贡献者中（防尘套的粉扑初步形容他们是“世界上最受尊敬的学者中的50名”），其中40名来自美国（29名）或英国（11名）。考虑到收藏的语言，这种地理上的集中可能是不可避免的。但是，当然，它确实使该主题更具特色，但是在提出该特定主题之前，需要说明一些警告。在这50名贡献者中（防尘套的粉扑初步形容他们是“世界上最受尊敬的学者中的50名”），其中40名来自美国（29名）或英国（11名）。考虑到收藏的语言，这种地理上的集中可能是不可避免的。但是，当然，它确实使该主题更具特色，