The Music Library has just completed a multi-year project to catalog two major collections of rare Italian opera libretti: the Taddei Collection consisting of 4,403 libretti dating from 1600 to 1953, and the Sicilian Libretto Collection containing about 930 libretti dating from 1650 to 1900. These two collections constitute one of the largest and most important collections of historical opera libretti in the U.S. Thanks to a Collections Access grant from the Library in 2005, they are now available to our faculty, students, and many users nationwide and worldwide. To browse the collections in Oskicat, type the title search "Taddei libretto collection" or "Sicilian libretto collection."
We are deeply grateful to the following graduate students for their dedicated work on the project: Rebekah Ahrendt, Laura Biggs, Sean Curran, Scott Edwards, Jose Neglia, Kimberly Parke, Camille Peters, Emily Richmond, Brandon Schneider, and Noel Verzosa. SJSU intern Elliott Smith also assisted.
An article by Rebekah Ahrendt and Camille Peters will be published in a forthcoming issue of Notes, the quarterly journal of the Music Library Association, with more detailed information about these collections.
originally posted on CU News by Elisabeth Spohrer, Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library