Frequently Used Resources
Opera scores are mostly classed in M1500 (full scores) and M1503 (piano-vocal scores). Books about opera are not in a single location because they may be classed according to historical period or geographical area.
If you need to filter one or the other out of your catalog search results, you can use the formats dropdown on the Advanced Search page to limit your searches to only books or only scores, or you can use the facets on the left side of the search results screen to narrow your results.
Under the Subject: Topic heading, the term for works about opera is Opera. The term for things that are operas is Operas.
Most opera recordings include the libretto, usually with a translation, but they are also sometimes published separately, either commercially or for specific performances. These can mostly be found in a few places in the library:
Works about libretti as are classed in ML2110.
In addition to IPA Source (see above), books about diction in singing are found in MT872 and MT883. These include general works about diction as well as in-depth guides to specific languages or repertoires.
A small sample of titles is presented below:
Scholars tend to specialize. If you see an author's name pop up several times when searching for information about a topic, odds are that doing a search for that author will turn up additional material that's helpful to you.
That said, "opera" is an enormously broad topic, and it can be hard to know where to start looking, particularly if you're new to the subject or to academic research. To that end, this page provides a very incomplete list of authors who have written extensively about some aspect of opera, with links to FSU catalog, RILM and Google Scholar searches, along with some advice on leveraging the power of citations.
Wagner, music and meaning, narrative, opera and gender
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
18th-century opera, French opera, Rameau, opera and literature, opera criticism
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
Puccini, Verdi
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
Italian opera, Donizetti, Rossini, Verdi, compositional process, editorial practice, opera performance
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
18th-century opera, French opera, Italian opera, Farinelli, Metastasio, Mozart
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
19th-century opera, Italian opera, Handel, Verdi, Vivaldi, opera and Romanticism
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
19th-century opera, American music, opera in America
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
19th-century opera, French opera, grand opera, Rossini
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
17th-century opera, Cavalli, Monteverdi, opera in Venice
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
Bellini, Mozart, Verdi, opera as industry, opera and economics, opera and nationalism, opera and politics
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
18th-century opera, Handel, Vivaldi, opera and drama
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
Russian opera, opera in Russia
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
German opera, Wagner, Weber
Catalog | RILM | Google Scholar
18th-century opera, Italian opera, primary sources in opera
If you have trouble finding much information relvant to your topic, a useful and efficient strategy is "citation chaining": checking the bibliographies or other citations in a relevant article or book you know about to find more articles or books that are also relevant to your topic. These in turn may point you to still more relevant works, and so on.
The obvious problem with citation chaining in this way is that it only goes one direction: backwards. There are some limited tools available to help you find articles that cite a source after it was written, although unfortunately they are much less comprehensive for the humanities than they are for the sciences.
If you have used Google Scholar you have probably noticed that most article listings have a Cited By link under the entry, which will show you later articles that cite the work in question.
Another tool with a similar function is Web of Knowledge's Arts and Humanities Citation Index. However, this functionality for music searches in Web of Knowledge is still extremely rudimentary.
Books specifically about opera and musical theater production are classed in MT955.
MT955 includes books dealing with the subject in general as well as specific repertory. However, other relevant items may lurk elsewhere, especially if they deal with elements such as staging or costume design also applicable to conventional theater.
Try refining a search starting with one of these subject headings:
In the present day most if not all significant opera companies maintain a web site, although these vary greatly in the usefulness of the information they provide. Large companies and houses will probably have entries in major reference works like New Grove/Oxford Music Online and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.
There are also reference works that deal specifically with opera companies, providing details such as history, repertory, significant premieres, contact information, and in some cases bibliographies. Several of these are listed below:
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