Milton Cross' Complete Stories of the Great Operas

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1948. Later Printing. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 8x5x1. Ramos, Dolores. Later printing. No jacket. Spine and boards faded, some pencil underlining and marginalia. 1948 Hard Cover. viii, 631 pp. Line drawings by Dolores Ramos. Milton John Cross (April 16, 1897 – January 3, 1975) was an American radio announcer famous for his work on the NBC and ABC radio networks. He was best known as the voice of the Metropolitan Opera, hosting its Saturday afternoon radio broadcasts for 43 years, from the time of their inception on December 25, 1931, until his death in 1975. Cross edited several popular editions of opera synopses and composer biographies, published by Doubleday in conjunction with the Met broadcasts. The earliest was entitled Milton Cross' Complete Stories of the Great Operas and was originally published in 1949 recounting the plots of 72 operas. It would be followed by More Stories of the Great Operas in 1971, and both titles would receive updated editions with "The New" appended to the title. He also co-authored with David Ewen Milton Cross' Encyclopedia of the Great Composers and their Music, a two-volume set of biographies for 78 composers, published in 1953.