Music Library gem takes main stage

Hargrove Music Library
Berkeley’s Hargrove Music Library holds many special materials. (Photo by Alejandro Serrano for the University Library)

A unique manuscript in the Library is the basis for an upcoming performance at Zellerbach Hall — in which a version of the opera not heard for 270 years will be performed. Le Temple de la Gloire, with a text by Voltaire and music by Jean-Phillippe Rameau, is scheduled at Cal Performances this weekend (April 28-30). California alumni magazine created a video that features Hargrove Music Library curator John Shepard, who discusses the Rameau piece and gives a tour of the library’s treasures. “Music helps us understand how people felt in their own time,” Shepard says.