While European powers were at war with the Ottoman Empire for much of the eighteenth century, European opera houses were staging operas featuring singing sultans and pashas surrounded by their musical courts and harems. Mozart wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio. Rossini created a series of works, including The Italian Girl in Algiers. And these are only the best known of a vast repertory. This book explores how these representations of the Muslim Ottoman Empire, the great nemesis of Christian Europe, became so popular in the opera house and what they illustrate about European–Ottoman international relations.

After Christian armies defeated the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683, the Turks no longer seemed as threatening. Europeans increasingly understood that Turkish issues were also European issues, and the political absolutism of the sultan in Istanbul was relevant for thinking about politics in Europe, from the reign of Louis XIV to the age of Napoleon. While Christian European composers and publics recognized that Muslim Turks were, to some degree, different from themselves, this difference was sometimes seen as a matter of exotic costume and setting. The singing Turks of the stage expressed strong political perspectives and human emotions that European audiences could recognize as their own.

当欧洲列强在十八世纪的大部分时间里与奥斯曼帝国交战时，欧洲的歌剧院却在上演歌剧，其主角是被他们的音乐法庭和后宫包围的唱歌的苏丹和帕夏。莫扎特写了《塞拉格里奥的绑架》。罗西尼创作了一系列的作品，包括《阿尔及尔的意大利女孩》。而这些仅仅是大量剧目中最知名的作品。本书探讨了这些对穆斯林奥斯曼帝国--基督教欧洲的大克星--的表现如何在歌剧院中变得如此受欢迎，以及它们对欧洲-奥斯曼国际关系的说明。

1683年，基督教军队在维也纳击败奥斯曼帝国后，土耳其人似乎不再那么具有威胁性。欧洲人越来越明白，土耳其的问题也是欧洲的问题，伊斯坦布尔苏丹的政治专制主义与欧洲的政治思考有关，从路易十四统治时期到拿破仑时代都是如此。虽然基督教欧洲作曲家和公众认识到穆斯林土耳其人在某种程度上与他们不同，但这种不同有时被看作是异国服装和环境的问题。舞台上唱歌的土耳其人表达了强烈的政治观点和人类情感，欧洲观众可以将其视为自己的情感。