The Project Gutenberg eBook, Operas Every Child Should Know, by Mary
Schell Hoke Bacon

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Title: Operas Every Child Should Know
Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces

Author: Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

Release Date: May 7, 2009 [eBook #28711]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

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_OPERAS_ EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the
Most Famous Masterpieces

by

DOLORES BACON

[Illustration]

New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers

All Rights Reserved

Copyright, 1911, by Doubleday, Page & Company

Printed in the United States
at
the Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.

[Illustration: Bruennhilde the Valkyrie]

FOREWORD

In selecting a few of the operas every child should know, the editor's
greatest difficulty is in determining what to leave out. The wish to
include "L'Africaine," "Othello," "Lucia," "Don Pasquale," "Mignon,"
"Nozze di Figaro," "Don Giovanni," "Rienzi," "Tannhaeuser," "Romeo and
Juliet," "Parsifal," "Freischuetz," and a hundred others makes one
impatient of limitations.

The operas described here are not all great compositions: Some of them
are hopelessly poor. Those of Balfe and Flotow are included because
they were expressions of popular taste when our grandfathers enjoyed
going to the opera.

The Nibelung Ring is used in preference to several other compositions
of Wagner because the four operas included in it are the fullest both
of musical and story wonders,