Lorenzo Lorusso,MD is the Head of the Neurology & Stroke Unit at Merate Hospital of the Neuroscience Dept. - A.S.S.T. -Lecco, Italy. He has main interest in Neuroimmunology and Neurological rare diseases. He was past President of the International Society for the History of the Neuroscience (ISHN) and he was appointed Chairman of the History Committee for the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) organizing seminars on History of Neuroscience in the main European cities. He has taught History of Medicine for the University of Milan and he participated as a teacher for courses on the relationship between music and medicine for the University of Milano-Bicocca. He is a melomaniac. Author and co-author of several papers published on national and international journals and of chapters for different books.

Michele Augusto Riva,MD, PhD is Associate Professor of History of Medicine at the University of Milano-Bicocca and Director of the Occupational Health Unit of the Fondazione IRCCS San Gerardo dei Tintori in Monza. He conducted research in different fields of history of medicine, particularly history of neurosciences and history of occupational health. In the period 2009-2015, he was appointed as Chair of ICOH Scientific Committee on History of Prevention of Occupational and Environmental Diseases and during his mandate he co-organized several international conferences around the world on the history of Occupational Health. Author or co-author of about 250 papers in international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, in the last decade he published different papers on the relationship between medicine and melodrama, being opera definitely one of his passions from a young age.

Vittorio Alessandro Sironi, MD is specialized in Neurosurgery. His main fields of interest are the treatment of several neurosurgical and neurological diseases and neuro-psychiatric disorders, but he is also a medicalhistorian, a medical anthropologist, a writer and essayist, author of more than 30 books and several papers published on national and international scientific journals. He is a lecturer on the relationship between music and the brain at the University of Milano-Bicocca and he is a melomaniac. He is the Scientific Director of the Research Centre on the History of Biomedical Thought of the University of Milano-Bicocca, coordinator of the Study group on the History of Neurosurgery within the Italian Society of Neurosurgery, founder and co-director of the book series Storia della Medicina e della Sanità (Laterza publisher; History of Medicine and Health Care), international collaborator of the Drug Chain Research Programme at the GEIRSO of the Université du Quebec, Montréal and Vice-President of the Association International et Interdisciplinaire sur la Chaîne du Médicaments.

Discusses the beneficial effects of melodrama on wellbeing and mental disorders associated with impaired quality of life

Increases awareness and knowledge of opera therapy improving multidisciplinary co-operation and integration

Confirms the therapeutic intervention improvement in neurological diseases relying on solid neuroscientific data

Part I. A Medical Look at Opera.- Chapter 1. Pathology and Lirics: Diseases and Illness in the Opera.- Chapter 2. Physicians, Charlatans, Healers and Aphotecaries in Opera.- Chapter 3. Caring Through Music: Music Therapy and Opera Therapy.- Part II. Relationship Between Music and the Brain.- Chapter 4. "Va Sossopra il Mio Cervello" (It Goes over My Brain): Neurology and Psychiatry in the Opera.- Chapter 5. Neuro-Musicology of Opera.- Chapter 6. The Singing Brain: Words and Music in the Opera.- Part III. Diseases that Affect Workers in the Opera World.- Chapter 7. Work and Disease in Italian Operas.- Chapter 8. Operatic Inspiration, Genius and Madness.- Chapter 9. Playing and Singing: A Demanding Profession.- Part IV. Finale.- Chapter 10. Representational Conventions and Varieties of Operatic Madness: The Gap Between Dramaturgy and Diagnosis.