I read this as a kid & decided to read it again to learn more about Opera (one of my worst categories when watching Jeopardy, along with sports, the Bible, & the Grand Ole Opry). When I read this as a kid, I only read about the operas that I'd heard, so I'd skipped everything except for Carmen, Love for 3 Oranges, L'Enfent et les Sortileges, Barber of Seville, & Porgy and Bess. So that meant that I experienced fresh the bizarreness of the plots of all of the other Operas. Not sure if the strangeness & bizarreness of the stories is true to the Operas they are from or not, since I've still never seen any of these operas in their entirety (& even if I had, I don't understand German, Italian, French, singing English, or Russian). The selection of operas in Sing me a Story represents a compromise between showing the kids the operas they may have heard, such as Barber of Seville(?) & operas that might interest the kids, such as Hansel & Gretel(??). Not sure what category the Tales of Hoffman, Love for 3 Oranges, or Daughter of the Regiment would fit into. The page of notes on all of the Operas is interesting because it highlights how recent most of what we think of as classic Opera is; only 2 of the Operas in Sing me a Story are from before 1840, & most of them are from between 1892 & 1951. Recommended reading for anyone who doesn't get the Pagliacci joke.