Stories from the Operas
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Beginner listeners new to opera who need the plot first
- Audience members preparing for a performance who want the story background in advance
- Parents introducing children to opera who need simple plot explanations
- General readers who want opera synopses in story form
Not a good fit for
- Professional readers seeking score analysis or depth in music theory
- Researchers needing rigorous textual scholarship and academic annotations
- Readers who want only original literature and have no interest in plot retellings
Reading tips
- Start with one or two operas you most want to hear, read the corresponding story, then listen to a recording.
- Read the plot summary before a performance and revisit it afterward, comparing it with your understanding.
- Use it alongside opera recordings or videos, matching stories to arias and scenes.
- No need to read straight through; use it as a reference book, consulting by opera as needed.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
FAQ
Can this book replace listening to opera itself?
Which operas' stories does the book include?
Can someone without a music background understand it?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Gladys Davidson is an author about whom limited public information is available; her only confirmed representative work is Stories from the Operas. Judging from the title, the book takes opera stories as its subject and most likely adapts the plots of classic operas into readable narrative texts, helping general readers follow the action of operas. Such books tend to be both accessible and readable, serving readers who are interested in opera but not necessarily familiar with its musical details. Because public information is limited, Davidson's life, nationality, dates of birth and death, and the full range of her work cannot be confirmed, and only one of her works is held in the collection. Any assessment of her style and influence must therefore rest on this single work: it presents operatic material in story form and has practical value for the popular dissemination of opera knowledge.
