The introduction explains what a pasticcio opera is and how the term is defined in the book, outlining where this differs from previous scholarship. The book argues that pasticcio is not a genre of opera, but a construction method that was already widely used before the word ‘pasticcio’ became current. Not all operas created using the pasticcio method designated themselves as pasticci, even while the term was current, but much twentieth-century scholarship only considered an opera a pasticcio if it used this designation. Evidence is given that the practice was more widespread and occurred for longer than previously argued and I challenge assumptions of its termination in the nineteenth century, arguing that pasticcio continued in direct descent from baroque practice into the twentieth century. The introduction also offers a prospectus of the varied arguments made throughout the book and a rationale for its long timeframe. Society’s changing relationship with pasticcio is argued to be closely connected to other socio-cultural and economic changes with long timeframes, such as the transition from an oral to a literate culture, generational changes in the understanding of the self and the contradictory influences of mass production on the arts.