The university professor and conductor August Ferdinand Hermann Kretzschmar (1848-1924) is considered the founder of hermeneutics in musicology. He was, among other roles, a full professor of music at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University in Berlin, director of the Royal Institute for Church Music, and succeeded the legendary violinist Joseph Joachim as director of the Hochschule für Musik, both also in Berlin. "The History of Opera" is one of his most important publications. In a broad scope and with numerous musical examples, the author describes the development of the genre from the early beginnings of stage singing to Verdi and Richard Wagner's "modern" opera concept in the second half of the 19th century. This is a reprint of the original edition published in Leipzig in 1919.