Singer-Machines: Describing Italian Singers, 1800-1850.

The article explains the electrical metaphors in describing singers in the first half of the nineteenth century. It describes electricity and automation as an opera's importation of scientific metaphors and discusses the mutual social science space between the two. It also focuses on the singer-machine concept by analyzing specific digressive models of description and observation being utilized among early nineteenth-century operatic critics. Because of the vastness of the subject, the author analyzes Italian singer-machines, which she describe to be the most marketable of the period.