TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

The Italian title of Verdi's opera "The Masked Ball" has been changed to "Un Ballo in Maschera", which is the correct Italian title of the opera.

The correct name of one of the characters of Donizetti's opera "Lucrezia Borgia" is Gennaro and not Genarro as was printed in the book. It has been changed. The modification makes the spelling consistent with the one from the opera "The Jewels of the Madonna," which is also described in the book.

The book cover was modified by the Transcriber and has been added to the public domain.