“Buckler’s book is the first serious English-language scholarship on Russian opera to be published since the Gorbachev/Yeltsin thaw. . . . The strengths of the book are twofold: revelation of new evidence discovered in archives in St. Petersburg and Moscow and exegesis of the process by which texts circulated between opera and prose literature. . . . Buckler is to be commended for her keen analyses of meta-theatrical novels and stories by lesser-known nineteenth-century authors. . . .”—The Russian Review
“This monograph should be of interest to anyone concerned with nineteenth century Russian cultural life. . . . Readers of this monograph can only hope that [Buckler] will continue further research . . . and produce more work as rewarding as this book.”—Slavic and East European Journal