I'm not a fan of opera but found this at a used bookstore and realized I needed to know more about the basics. This is a short history of opera, written in 1940 by a Cambridge professor of music and opera devotee. I expected it to be dry and didactic, but it is witty and deprecating. The author freely admits to many of the reasons that the average person might be repelled by opera: terrible acting, self-important singers, long recitatives in a foreign language, conductors who think they are the most important person in the theater, pompous critics, etc. But he makes a case for opera as a a medium to be enjoyed by the "common man" and insists, reasonably, that opera always be performed in the language of the audience. ( )