The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts > Collections > Music Division

Calendar of Exhibitions
2000s

* a concert was sponsored by the Music Division in the Bruno Walter Auditorium in conjunction with the exhibition

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Opera Quiz [prints from The Great Operas: the Romantic legends upon which the masters of song have founded their famous lyrical compositions, ed. by James W. Buel]
Third Floor Reading Room
June 6, 2006 -

Quizzes the public on identifying the operas in the prints displayed.

Image: Giuseppe Verdi.  Rigoletto, Act 1, scene 1: Monterone’s curse.  Watercolor (after C. D. Graves), © 1899 J. W. Buel

 

Opera on the Air: The Metropolitan Opera Radio Broadcasts turn 75
Third Floor Reading Room
December 10, 2005 through May 6, 2006 (extended to June 3, 2006)

In collaboration with the Metropolitan Opera, an exhibition celebrating the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts on their 75th anniversary season; recalling the history of the broadcasts, its announcers, its intermission features; broadcast debuts and premieres, and broadcasts of American operas commissioned by the Met, through photographs, programs, radio scripts, press clippings, props (on loan from the Met) and scores.  Also featured, operas in the current season’s broadcast: Rigoletto, Die Zauberflöte, La Traviata, and Lohengrin and taped selections from the collection of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound of broadcast performances and intermission features.

 

Opera Quiz [prints from The Great Operas: the Romantic legends upon which the masters of song have founded their famous lyrical compositions, ed. by James W. Buel]
Third Floor Reading Room
October 1, 2004 through December 6, 2005

Quizzes the public on identifying the operas in the prints displayed.

Image: Jules Massenet.  Manon, Act 3: Manon asks for forgiveness.  Watercolor (after William de Leftwoch Dodge), © 1899 J. W. Buel

 

Enrico Caruso: Remembering his Career at the Metropolitan Opera
Third Floor Reading Room
November 22, 2003 through February 7, 2004; July 9, 2004 through September 2, 2004

Marking the 100th anniversary of Caruso’s debut at the Metropolitan Opera (November 23, 1903), traces his career there through photographs of him in the roles he sang; also displayed, eight original caricatures by Caruso from the Music Division’s collections.

Image: Enrico Caruso as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi’s Rigoletto, photographed by Aimé Dupont, New York, 1904.  Marcella Sembrich Papers, Music Division

 

Music for Central Park: A Glimpse at the Early Years
Third Floor Reading Room
May 23, 2003 through December 9, 2003

Early concerts in the park and early songs written about Central Park.

Image: Sheet music cover displaying picture of Central Park Garden on an edition of Robert Schumann’s Träumerei (J. Schuberth & Co., 1869).  Special Collections, Music Division

 

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869): Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of His Birth
Third Floor Reading Room
January 28, 2003 through May 22, 2003

Original material from the Music Division’s collections pertaining to Berlioz, from correspondence, images, first editions, and his published criticism.

Image: Engraving of Hector Berlioz by Metzmacher after a photograph by Nadar.  Iconography Collection, Music Division

 

Maria Callas Remembered
Third Floor Reading Room
October 11, 2002 through February 5, 2003

On this the 25th anniversary of her death, we remember Maria Callas's Metropolitan Opera debut in Bellini's Norma.

Image: Maria Callas.  Iconography Collection, Music Division

 

Musical Transformations
Donald and Mary Oenslager and Vincent Astor galleries
October 29, 2001 through January 5, 2002
See related:  Online Exhibition

Part of the larger exhibition, “Transformations: A Celebration of the Creative Spirit in the Performing Arts.”  Focuses on some of the diverse meanings of transformation in musical composition and performance, and the less obvious ways in which a composer transforms ideas into musical notation; illustrated through manuscripts, first and early editions, engravings, photographs, letters, and sheet music, and accompanied by audio examples compiled from the library’s Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound; also features an interactive quiz “I’ve Heard that Song Before,” in which one is asked to identify the classical tune on which a popular song is based.

Image: The Star Spangled Banner: A Pariotic Song [music by John Stafford Smith; words by Francis Scott Key].  Baltimore: Carrs Music Store, [1814].  Music Division