Dedication: To my friend Walter Damrosch
Master of the art form so irreverently treated in these pages.
Kate Douglas Wiggin
PREFACE
(underscores denote italics)
More than a dozen years ago musical scholars and critics began to
illuminate the musical darkness of New York with lecture-recitals
explanatory of the more abstruse German operas. Previous to this era no one
had ever thought, for instance, of unfolding the story, or the "Leit
motive" (if there happened to be any!), in "The Bohemian Girl,"
"Maritana," or "Martha." These and many other delightful but thoroughly
third-class works unfolded themselves as they went along, to the entire
satisfaction of a public so unbelievably care-free, happy, thoughtless,
childlike, uninstructed, that it hardly seems as if they could have been
our ancestors.
