In 'Sospirare, Tremare, Piangere': Conventions of the Body in Italian Opera, 1810-1860, Melina Esse, a candidate for the Ph.D. in Music, takes up an investigation of representations of the physical in early nineteenth-century opera, arguing that opera’s preoccupation with the suffering female body is the result of complex interactions between gender, nationalism, and romanticism in early ottocento Italy. As the taste for sentimental display declined in Italy due to nationalist critics of “foreign” modes of expression, Esse points out, the attitude toward bodily imitation in music shifted radically as well and by mid-century, mimetic gestures came to be associated almost exclusively with women. Attending to music’s formal structures and melody types in terms of the contemporary gender, class, and national anxieties they enact, she emphasizes, fruitfully complicates our understanding of the many ways that opera produces meaning.