The title of this issue, ‘Performance Studies and Opera’, optimistically announces a conjunction between two disciplines that have previously had surprisingly little to do with each other, despite substantial common ground. The three articles gathered here, however, bear marks both of the excitement sparked by the novelty of bringing the methods of performance studies to bear on opera (significantly, the reverse process, operatic theory used to interpret other modes of performance, remains almost unimaginable) and a caution occasioned by their authors' sensitivity to the difficulties involved in any such translation.