The essays in this work focus on courtly musical entertainments in early modern Europe, providing a framework in which to locate the many aesthetic considerations which lay behind the creation of opera and other musical forms, and through analyses of individuual events, the modalities of the circulation and adaption of a so-called Italian model throughout Europe. They highlight the constant evolution of the musical entertainments of the Baroque age, and in so doing, invite the reader to re-examine cliches about the origin and nature of operatic genres.