THIS book is just the thing to delight hundreds of
homee, where families who have first tasted opera at Sadler's Wells can find full synopses of opera librettos, written in racy Kobbesque, and strum through simple piano reductions of the "principal airs," transposed when necessary into keys which any voice can compass. It is an American compilation, dealing with Lohengrin (after Aida the most performed opera at the Metropolitan), Don Giovanni, Carmen. Traviata, Faust and Tales of Hoffmann, Mr. Simon does not hesitate to amplify the action of the operas he describes. Don Giovanni is firmly set in Seville ; the Commendatore enters with a lamp in his hand which Don Giovanni strikes out so as hot to be recognised. (This happens in Bertati's similar libretto for Gazzaniga.) But the unmasking of the trio at the ball-scene is not mentioned. In des- cribing the second scene of the opera, Mr. Simon makes Leporello "utter this profound thought: 'Dear Sir Patron,' he says, 'the life you are leading '—and he leans over to shout in Sir Patron's ear— 'is that of a bum !' !' The rather pretentious introduction shows us curious glimpses of American intellectual life: "A half-dozen plays of Shakespeare's (but only of Shakespeare's) have endured with sufficient vigour to be often revived" . . . " Merimee's novelette (Carmen) remains an occasional exercise in college French." All this shows clearly enough what the book is like ; but at thirty shillings it makes a handsome volume, with a good many pages of score and it could certainly serve to introduce novitiates into the simpler mysteries of grand opera.
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