Over Here, Over There: Transatlantic Conversations on the Music of World War I ed. by William Brooks, Christina Bashford, and Gayle Magee (review)

mission undertaken by Jacob von Stählin with the periodical St. Petersburg Gazette from the 1730s onwards. The opportunity for financial reward was one of the reasons why actors were traveling east. When considering the circulation of artists between Italy and Russia, the editor states the objective of critically assessing how Italian-ness (italianità, “the notion we use in the sense of the image of otherness that Europeans wished to assimilate” [p. 12]) was— together with musical style—“defined but also challenged through the productions of Italian theatre and opera abroad and their border-crossing encounters with national traditions” (pp. 12–13). Of course, professionals from the Italian peninsula promoted the circulation of their repertory by travelling throughout Europe. But a common nationality is given as an axiom without considering the differences among multiple places of origin. The discourse is organized according to an idea of the European geographical (and cultural) map that refers to a stereotyped national principle: the opposition between Italian-ness and otherness, for example, does not seem appropriate for a study on mobility devoted specifically to the eighteenth century, when (if ever) different places cannot be so easily defined in national terms, nor can their inhabitants. Apart from this somewhat anachronistic approach, the volume deserves a careful reading by those who seek valuable information on Italian authors, their plays and diffusion in specific regions, and on individual artists performing operas throughout various European courts. From this perspective, it can undoubtedly serve as a basis for further work in the realm of cultural transfer.