The chapter aims to illustrate the transformations that took place in the urban centers of Latium vetus during the 4th and 3th centuries BCE, the chronological period that includes the last, turbulent decades of the political autonomy of the cities of Latium and that sees, after the dissolution of the Latin League, the constitutional redefinition of the subjected communities and their inclusion in the political, military, and economic dynamics of Rome. At the same time, the chapter proposes to evaluate the role of Latin urban culture in the process of Roman expansion in Latium adiectum and in the wider colonial phenomenon: This shows extensive territorial reorganization and newly founded urban centers which are hardly “Roman” and are more related to or derived from the urban Latin tradition (for in terms of settlement principles, spatial organization, use of materials, and construction techniques). The communities of ancient Latium, in fact, must have had a primary role in the process of conquest and “Romanization” of the Peninsula, a process that because of its dynamics, its manifestations, and its outcomes, would be more correctly defined as “Latinization.”

Taking three photographs of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ports of Izmir, Thessaloniki, and Istanbul as points of departure, the chapter investigates the question of why these highly diverse populations and the urban space they inhabited have been relegated to the margins of national and imperial histories of the Eastern Mediterranean. In particular, it claims that the port cities' myriad ways of blending particular aspects of modern Western and Central European culture with more regional characteristics warrants more attention in historiography.

It is clear that the productions in the West End and on Broadway of The Merry Widow marked a distinctive new phase in operetta reception. The massive success of The Merry Widow opened up a flourishing market for operettas from Vienna and Berlin. This was confirmed by the huge success of Straus’s The Chocolate Soldier in New York (1909) and London (1910). The Berlin operettas of Jean Gilbert were soon in demand in the West End and on Broadway. Continental European operetta entered a marketplace dominated by musical comedy. The first major blow to the operetta market, especially in the UK, was the outbreak of the First World War. After the war, many creators of operetta were eager to escape to the comfort of historical romances. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, many people were prepared to pay for operetta, and an assortment of theatres and ticket prices enabled a broad social mixture to do so. In addition to critical-aesthetic reception, theatrical productions were open to moral concerns. The chapter ends with reflections on the reasons for the decline in productions on Broadway and in the West End post-1933.

Cosmopolitanism involves a taste for cultural products of other countries and requires a disposition of openness towards new cultural experience. Like jazz, operetta appealed to people from different cultural backgrounds. This chapter examines operetta from the perspective of both the social and the aesthetic. It explores the social conditions that allowed operetta and its cultural networks to flourish, but also seeks to explain what is cosmopolitan about the stage works themselves, in their musical style and dramatic content. A cosmopolitan genre is one that is open to international musical influences, as European operetta demonstrated when responding to jazz and dance band music. A diasporic cosmopolitanism forms another dimension of the art world of operetta. A diaspora may make great efforts to retain cultural traditions but can also assimilate other cultural knowledge and practices. Operetta involved a large number of Jews working in all aspects of its production. By engaging with culture across borders of all kinds, cosmopolitanism challenges ideas of Self and Other. To be cosmopolitan is to recognize a common humanity in the world’s diverse cultural artefacts.