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December 30, 2008
Metropolitan Opera Digital Archives
The Metropolitan Opera Digital Archives contain sound clips of original recordings, images (photos, set designs, etc.) and text from all performances from the early 1880's to the beginning season in 2005 in the Metopera Database spanning the history of the Metropolitan Opera as well as coverage in the 'Opera News'. An interesting aspect of this database, is that as the digital collection grows, the individual careers of the performers, conductors, dancers and other players are developed chronologically with specific performances and productions. In some cases, reviews and images are included in performance information that would be useful to many types of research. In some cases, the image quality is low, but usually legible. A timeline gives some samples of the collection in a visual layout.
New additions of reviews and photographs are found in one of the tabs of the database. And, in case you are at a loss for names of performers or performance for a search, there are guides to performances (sorted by number of times the Opera has been performed-- La Bohème is at the top, with 1200 performances to date!) and names (also ordered by frequency of performance-- leader in this category is Charles Anthony with over 2900 performances in his 54 year career). This database will surely become richer with additional content, full-text capabilities and longer (or complete) clips. (Currently, the majority of the clips are under two minutes in length.)
Posted by vad17 at December 30, 2008 02:38 PM
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