tin whistles are
used, but that is not music in its best estate, and musical purpose is
best understood after a composer has labelled it, whether the
ultra-artistic are ready to admit it or not.

The opera is never more enjoyed than by a music lover who is incapable
of criticism from lack of musical knowledge: music being first and
last an emotional art; and as our emotions are refined it requires
compositions of a more and more elevated character to appeal to them.
Thus, we range from the bathos and vulgarity of the music hall to the
glories of grand opera!

The history of opera should be known and composers classified, just as
it is desirable to know and to classify authors, painters, sculptors,
and actors.

Music is first of all something to be felt, and it is one of the arts
which does not always explain itself.

DOLORES BACON.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. BALFE: THE BOHEMIAN GIRL 3

II. BEETHOVEN: FIDELIO 35

III. BERLIOZ: THE DAMNATION OF FAUST 51

IV. BIZET: CARMEN 69

V. DEKOVEN: ROBIN HOOD 95

VI. FLOTOW: MARTHA 105

VII. HUMPERDINCK: HAENSEL AND GRETEL 135

VIII. MASCAGNI: CAVALLERIA RUSTICANA 152

IX. MEYERBEER: THE PROPHET 163

X. MOZART: THE MAGIC FLUTE 191

XI. SULLIVAN: PINAFORE 218

XII. VERDI: RIGOLETTO, IL TROVATORE, AIDA 238

XIII. WAGNER: THE NIBELUNG RING, THE
MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBERG,
LOHENGRIN 306

OPERAS
EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

OPERAS EVERY CHILD SHOULD KNOW

BALFE

The story of The Bohemian Girl is supposed to have been taken from a
French ballet entitled The Gipsy, which was produced in Paris in 1839.
Again, it is said to have been stolen from a play written by the
Marquis de Saint-Georges, which was named La Bohemienne. However that
may be, it would at first sight hardly seem worth stealing, but it has
nevertheless been popular for many decades. Balfe, the composer, had
no sense of dramatic composition and was not much of a musician, but
he had a talent for writing that which