The fourth volume of the present series of Synopses is devoted, as its title indi cates, to standard operas. The preceding three, dealing respectively with Shake speare, Dickens, and Scott, have appar ently met a popular need, and readers have asked from time to time for a similar work presenting the casts and plots of the best known Operas. This volume is an answer to their request, and is issued with the aim of making it as serviceable as possible both to opera-goers and to that still larger class outside the great cities, who wish to be readily conversant with all such works. Indeed, a knowledge of the standard operas is as essential nowadays as a knowl edge of the classics of literature Each sheds its in?uence upon the other, and the line is continually being crossed between the adjacent fields. Plays of Shakespeare, like Othello and Merry Wives novels like Scott's Bride of Lammermoor; and the latest Broadway success, all reappear in musical setting. The general reader.