Today’s cataloging prize is a libretto of L’amore industrioso, text by Ferdinando Casorri. John M. Ward, the collector who donated this item, was particularly interested in the documentary evidence to be found in librettos.
Collections in Focus
A warning from the High Priestess of Oom
Alma Hirsig’s My Life in a Love Cult.
What’s New: Di Lasso motet partbooks
The Harvard Theatre Collection has just purchased a pair of bound volumes of Orlando Di Lasso motet partbooks, printed in 1588. At this time, music was printed note by note in movable type. Due to the extreme complexity of lining up four, five, or eight parts in a score using this process, most works were Read More
Unmodified sexuality
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection. We return to the occult in this week’s feature from the Santo Domingo Collection. Today’s author is Austin Osman Spare, an English artist, writer, and occultist active in the first half of the twentieth century. While Spare’s finely-wrought Read More
Explosive Opera
In September, 1662, the Elector of Bavaria and his wife celebrated the christening of their infant son with eight days of public and private festivity. The squares and streets of Munich were lit up, gold coins and commemorative medals struck and bread and wine freely distributed to the populace. Meanwhile, a trilogy of interwoven operas Read More