My dissertation examines the translation, adaptation, and circulation of language, music, and culture in Europe during the late eighteenth century. I use as my case studies four French operas that were translated into Italian by the poet Lorenzo Da Ponte and performed for Anglophone audiences at the King’s Theatre, London in the 1790s. My examination of Da Ponte’s translation work in London yields valuable observations about how foreigners of Italian extraction were able to shape British cultural and even political life through aesthetic practices on the operatic stage. This historically grounded and performance-oriented study demonstrates the importance of cultural and linguistic translation in the circulation of opera in cosmopolitan Europe in the 1790s.