Annals of Opera, 1597-1940 - Compiled from the Original Sources

The first attempt at a Dictionary of Operas was made by Leone Allacci, a learned Greek from the island of Chios, who became Librarian of the Vatican Library and published "Drammaturgia", a catalogue of all operas performed up to that date, in 1666. Since then a number of catalogues, dictionaries, and histories of Opera have been published in various languages, but the present monumental work of Dr. Alfred Loewenberg is the first, as far as I know, to arrange the material year by year in chronological, rather than alphabetical irder. It starts with the first of all operas, "La Dafne" composed by Jacopo Peri and produced at Florence in 1597, and ends with those produced in 1940. .... For every Opera named we are given the names of librettist and composer, as well as the name of the theater and the town in which the first production took place; but besides these bare facts we are often supplied with a vast quantity of subsidiary information, especially as regards the source of the plot, subsequent revivals in other cities and translations into various languages. ***Excerpt from Introduction by Edward J. Dent, October 1942***