Schlegel looms large over this exciting new collection on choruses ancient and modern, as does Germany in general, with 7 of the 20 papers presented here focusing on the reception of predominantly Greek tragic choruses in German thought and performance. This may be quite justifiable when considering the function of the dramatic chorus which, as is frequently pointed out, has tended to be either idealised or problematised with both scholars and practitioners reaching back to the German Romantics. In this volume, Schlegel's famous ‘idealized spectator’ is placed into perspective by S. Goldhill, who investigates this intellectual history and its influence, not only on theory, but also in the practice of theatre and opera. Goldhill traces a line of thought through Hegel, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner based on the idea of the power of music to reveal Innerlichkeit or ‘inwardness’ (p. 42), placing Schiller's 1803 Bride of Messina and Mendelssohn's 1841 Antigone within this intellectual context. This relationship between scholarship and performance is a particularly strong feature of this volume, which sprung from a conference on the chorus at the Archive of Performance of Greek and Roman Drama in Oxford in 2010.

The editors divide the papers into four sections: ‘Scholarship’, which is described as encapsulating conceptual and historical understanding; ‘Aesthetics’ – formal and artistic questions; ‘Shadows’, explained as ‘expressions of temporal distance and nostalgia’ (p. 9); and ‘Community’ – social and political cohesion. Four very good papers focusing on the chorus in antiquity (Peponi, Budelmann, Murnaghan and Seaford) introduce each section, which the editors suggest will ‘create provocative juxtapositions of various choral concepts’ (p. 9). This approach seemed a little confusing at first, but as the volume unfolded this organisational framework became quite effective. This is because the modern choruses under discussion, whether from eighteenth-century France, interwar Germany or the golden age of Broadway, are set alongside the scholarship on antiquity in a manner that fosters serendipities of thought and inter-cultural reflections of both difference and connectivity. This is further enhanced by the intertextuality of the papers themselves, which are frequently placed in dialogue with each other. For example, E. Hall's ‘Mob, Cabal, or Utopian Commune?’ examines what she describes as the ‘revolutionary potential of Greek theatrical chorality’ (p. 282) and challenges Goldhill's claim that the definitive manifestation of tragic chorality is found in the German Romantic period. This is just one example of the kind of dynamic multiplicity of perspectives that a well crafted collected volume can and should produce and Choruses does this very well indeed.

Recently, the chorus and what has been termed ‘chorality’ has been an area of growing interest from anthropological, social/cultural, religious and performative perspectives.Footnote ¹ R. Seaford helps place the chorus within these several interconnected milieus in ‘The Politics of the Mystic Chorus’, which reminds us of the importance of the procession, collective movement and the relationship of choral performance to space. Although the editors have set a different path for this volume, I. Rutherford provides a very useful survey of the main anthropological approaches to the chorus, particularly as a performance form emanating from dance rituals. This is particularly welcome, as dance (and movement) has been an area somewhat neglected in past studies on the dramatic chorus. Also with an emphasis on dance, F. Macintosh discusses the social aspects of the Corps de Ballet. Macintosh states that the ancient Greeks have tended to be invoked in the history of dance at times of aesthetic transformation. Among these ‘notable classically inspired turning points’ (p. 309) were the experiments of Noverre in France in the 1700s who attempted to re-imagine ancient pantomime as a new dance form called ballet d'action.

While the geographical focus of this book is mostly on northern Europe, the first recorded performance of a Greek themed play in the United States was one such ballet d'action staged in Boston in 1797 (possibly at the new Haymarket Theatre) entitled Medea Outwitted. In America, as in Europe, the first contact many audiences had with Greek drama in performance was through an expression of choral dance and Macintosh reminds us of the centrality of dance in such choral presentations. British theatre director, H. Eastman adds emphasis to this important point. She describes the move towards a kind of chorality in British theatre of the past 20 years as inspired by the movement training of Jacques Lecoq, Polish experimental theatre and the British physical theatre movement and she notes the tension inherent in ‘negotiating between the contradictory poles of individuality and chorality’ (p. 376).

Of course, no volume of this kind can hope to touch on every important aspect of ancient choruses and their modern reception, but this book will certainly help to inspire a great deal more work on this important subject. Having said that, the presence of ancient comic choruses and their modern interpreters would have been welcome. The focus here is firmly on the reception of the Greek tragic chorus, although H. Stanley's ‘Seneca's Chorus of One’ presents a creative way in which to consider the choral work of Roman drama, such as it was.

There is much to recommend here to scholars of classical reception, performance and drama studies. Additionally, the theatre director, opera librettist or choreographer contemplating staging a chorus will find a great deal of value in these pages. In this vein, M. Revermann provides an adept view of ‘Brechtian Chorality’, while the choruses of early opera with their connections to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century concepts of ancient drama are deftly illuminated by R. Savage. L. Dreyfus contributes an intriguing paper that reappraises Wagner's debt to Greek drama and describes how Wagner envisioned the orchestra as performing the function of the chorus. Most compelling is a description of how Wagner's characteristic leitmotivic practice was inspired by the choruses of Aeschylus.

Z. Dunbar's ‘How Do You Solve a Problem like the Chorus? Hammerstein's Allegro and the Reception of the Greek Chorus on Broadway’ is a fascinating account of Hammerstein's attempt to reconceptualise the Greek chorus on the commercial Broadway stage with the musical Allegro, when he was at the top of his game after having staged the smash hits Oklahoma! and Carousel. Allegro flopped – twice – once on Broadway and later on TV. Dunbar explains how the representation of a Greek chorus was considered at the cutting edge of 1950s American experimental theatre, but that Hammerstein's decision to stage it as a moralising theatrical device (Dunbar thinks indirectly influenced by Schlegel and Schiller) led to the idea of the chorus overwhelming the actuality of the drama – a lofty concept presented ‘on high’. For Dunbar, the chorus became truly successful in Furth and Sondheim's Company in 1970 – a play about the vagaries of marriage, what Dunbar describes as ‘a truly dystopian ensemble’ (p. 258). It is such incisive observations that make this book such a valuable resource as these kinds of modern interpretations are reflected against how ancient practice has been interpreted.

As for Schlegel, Billings's erudite essay on European reappraisals of the chorus around 1880 sets Schlegel's theories within existing attitudes to the chorus among earlier French and German thinkers. Billings quotes a 1795 letter Schlegel received from his brother, Friedrich Wilhelm:

The volume successfully inverts this idea – the threads that tie the ancient chorus to modernity provide a means to understand how it is constantly being remade as a reflection of the culture that recreated it. Rather than trying to loosen the knots, this stimulating book expertly explores how and why they came to be tied.