Father Lee's Opera Quiz Book

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

Opera expert Father M. Owen Lee has compiled 44 of his puzzles (although
the blurb on the book’s cover mistakenly says 45), all but two of
which first appeared in The Opera Quarterly. The quizzes, anagrams,
crostics, vertical patterns, and crossword puzzles are accompanied by
introductions. The wordplays run the operatic gamut with sidebars on the
movies and the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts for which Lee has
long been a commentator and game- show participant.

As a classical music lover who is not well versed in opera, I found
these quizzes very challenging. Reference books and recordings are a
must to tackle them. Knowledgeable audiences, however, will enjoy
finding the solutions.

Finally, the layout and presentation of the book is attractive,
although the print legibility was at times faint.