in Mozart's Operas. By Jessica Waldoff. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. [xii, 337 p. ISBN 0-19-515197-6. $45.] Illustrations, references, index. Any book about Mozart published in 2006 may immediately engender suspicion of a celebratory tome hastily put together to mark 250th birthday of Austrian composer. In case of Jessica Waldoff's in Mozart's Operas, however, date of publication may well be a fortunate coincidence. There is nothing resembling a last-minute birthday present in this long awaited, well-written book, which is result of many years of reflection over an essential, but previously overlooked plot element in music dramaturgy: recognition. As Waldoff defines it, recognition-or anagnoresis, term we have inherited from Aristotle's Poetics-marks shift from ignorance to knowledge and involves protagonist (and audience) in a powerful reversal of former (p. 3). Already in this foundational definition, reader may immediately sense safe distance separating Aristotle's definition-constructed a posteriori on basis of philosopher's experience with literary genres of his time-from idea of recognition that Waldoff uses for her critical approach to late eighteenth-century opera. For Greek philosopher, anagnoresis represents reversal or peripeteia, shift from ignorance to knowledge (often resulting in pity or fear; pp. 4-5)-an extremely productive concept in opera studies. What is less productive is Aristotle's undermining of psychological element in his ideological conception of drama, in which events, not people and their state of being, propel action towards a goal. As Aristotle puts it, the goal is a certain activity, not a qualitative state. . . . It is not, therefore, function of agent's actions to allow portrayal of their characters; is, rather, for sake of their actions that characterization is included. So, events and plot-structure are goal of tragedy, and goal is what matters most of all (Aristotle, Poetics, book 6, quoted by Waldoff, p. 82). This citation appears in context of Waldoff's third chapter entitled Reading for Plot and offers a mechanistic view of drama that may well serve plot analysis of Le nozze di Figaro (pp 88-95), crafted by Da Ponte after ingenious invention of dramatist and clockmaker Beaumarchais. It requires, however, a substantial degree of modification to make suitable for analysis of Mozart's other operas. As Waldoff is well aware, psychological characterization is carefully achieved musically and dramatically, and moments of psychological transformation are pivotal in conception of drama. These are indeed treated by Waldoff as moments of recognition. After first two chapters, centered on recognition as enlightenment in Die Zauberflote and on Recognition Scenes in Theory and Practice respectively, becomes clear that it would be pointless to try to base an understanding of recognition scenes in opera on Aristotle's categories (p. 50). Waldoff arrives at this conclusion on basis of two main reasons: one is lack of a unidirectional teleological conception of drama (subplots are as essential in opera buffa as in heroic opera), while another is shift of attention from objective events to subject. Tamino's recognition, for example, involves a process of self-discovery and acquisition of knowledge, which also shifts center of attention from (as in Oedipus or in Odyssey) to of identity, or the tendency to celebrate individual discoveries of feeling (especially love), to favor striving for knowledge over inherited wisdom, and to center plots on themes of enlightened governance in both political [see also chapter 8 on La clemenza di Tito] and domestic spheres (p. 54). The political implication is inevitably that recognitions of family ties and birth-right appear to be far less important than recognitions of self, knowledge, purpose, or feeling. …