Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/361

REVIEW. 347 the librettos in the Library of Congress, a contri- bution to the bibliography of librettos which can hardly fail to stimulate the interest of musicians if not of men of letters on the subjeft. The total number of librettos possessed by the Library of Congress is estimated by Mr. Sonneck at about 17,000. About 12,000 of these were in- cluded in the famous Schatz collection, which was acquired in 1908. Mr. Schatz had confined his energies almost exclusively to the acquisition of opera librettos, and it is therefore in this depart- ment that the strength of the Congress Library collection lies, particularly as regards German and Italian operas of the eighteenth century. In English and French librettos the Schatz collection was relatively weak, but the English secflion in the Library of Congress has been materially strengthened by the acquisition of the Longe collection of minor English dramatists, which in- cluded some four hundred eighteenth century librettos. Mr. Sonneck's catalogue, which is in two volumes, includes only librettos printed before 1800. The first and larger volume is devoted to a catalogue in which the librettos are entered under their original titles, with cross-references from the titles of translations and adaptations. Every entry is accompanied by annotations, sometimes only a few lines in length, but often extremely elaborate, and occasionally extending to something like a thousand words, in which the reader is supplied with praftically all the available information re- garding the production of the opera in question.