Operas 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.