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

by Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

Excerpt from Operas That Every Child Should Know: Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces
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" "Tannhauser," "Romeo and Juliet," "Parsifal," "Freischutz," 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, and are at the same time the least understood.
"Aida" and "Carmen" belong here - as do many which are left out - because of their beauty and musical splendour. Few, instead of many, operas have been written about in this book, because it seemed better to give a complete idea of several than a superficial sketch of many.
The beginnings of opera - music-drama - are unknown; but Sulpitius, an Italian, declared that opera was heard in Italy as early as 1490.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Genres: Music

477 pages, Paperback

First published February 8, 2002

About the author

Dolores Bacon was an American writer, reporter, actress, and playwright. She is best known as an author of children's books and for her work as a reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World.

Reviews

[Duckpondwithoutducks · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is interesting that the title of this book is "Operas Every Child Should Know," as at this time many adults don't even know anything about opera. It is one of the differences between the time that the book was first published, in 1911, and today, just over 100 years later.

The operas that are discussed are:
Balfe: The Bohemian Girl
Beethoven: Fidelio
Berlioz: The Damnation Of Faust
Bizet: Carmen
DeKoven: Robin Hood
Flotow: Martha
Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel
Mascagni: Cavalleria Rusticana
Meyerbeer: The Prophet
Mozart: The Magic Flute
Sullivan: Pinafore
Verdi: Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, Aida
Wagner: The Nibelung Ring, The Mastersingers Of Nuremberg, Lohengrin

If a similar list was made today, of must-see operas, it would probably not include the Balfe, DeKoven and Meyerbeer, and would definitely have more Puccini.

The plot summaries of the operas are a little too detailed, and include too much of the actual dialogue, which makes the summaries somewhat hard to follow.