The love of opera enhanced by the encyclopedic knowledge of its author makes this slight volume a delight to read. Over the years I became familiar with Owen Lee through his appearances on the 'Opera Quiz' segments of the Metropolitan Opera Saturday afternoon brodcasts. This book highlights some of the greatest operas and provides delightful personal introductions for each. I would highly recommend this book to all opera lovers. ( )

Despite the limitations of the format-intermission commentary drawn from the Texaco-Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts between 1984 and 1993-this collection makes rewarding casual reading. Lee, a Catholic priest and a Canadian classics professor, is an inspired guide to the operas considered, with separate chapters devoted to each of six Verdi operas, five by Wagner, three by Strauss, two by Puccini, one by Mozart and a chapter encompassing four French operas. He views Die Meistersinger as a master song in itself and notes its peculiarity in the Wagner canon for turning the listener outward rather than inward. No composer, shows Lee, reads our hearts as deeply as Verdi, especially in his depictions of fathers and their children (Rigoletto and Gilda; the Germonts). Puccini, on the other hand, is an executioner-Tosca with its firing squad; La Fanciulla del West, a lynch mob-darkly interested in the suffering of his characters. Lee's radio talks deserve their recovery from the ether.

These 21 commentaries were originally presented by Lee (a priest and professor of classics) during the first intermissions of Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. As a result, the essays are brief, diffuse, personal, and always very readable. A thesis that Lee rises to repeatedly is that the emotion of opera depends on the marriage of libretto and score, story and melody.