- St. Olaf Libraries
- Research Guides
- Music 269: Opera Workshop
- Databases and websites you should check out
Music 269: Opera Workshop
LibKey Nomad
Research and Instruction Librarian for Music & Fine Arts
Karen Olson
she/her/hers
Databases: access free from your room!
- African American Music Reference This link opens in a new windowA full-text reference resource that covers a variety of subjects. Does include sheet music when available as well!
- IPA Source This link opens in a new windowInternational Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions and literal translations of opera arias, art songs, and Latin sacred texts, for your convenience!
- Met Opera on Demand This link opens in a new windowStreaming video of more than 450 Met Opera performances. Although the Met repertoire has not been as inclusive, they've been commissioning operas (including some BIPOC ones) for a while. This is a good place to find some fantastic performances, too.
- Oxford Music Online This link opens in a new windowAn online reference database - this is a great place to learn more about specific composers (encyclopedia entries are written by scholars considered the leading source of info on that person!), and also view works cited lists (considered as exhaustive or accurate as possible).
Some great open-access websites
- IMSLP.orgThis is a crowdsourced website of sheet music, which is downloadable for free. The catch is that this only captures items in public domain (copyright-protected sheet music is unavailable here).
- Institute for Composer DiversityFeatures a nifty, searchable database! Highly recommended.
- Music by Black ComposersA fantastic database. Click the "Resources" tab on the top right to find their Living Composers Directory, as well as their Historic Composers Directory.
- Composer's Equity ProjectThis is a list from 2018 includes the names and websites of composers identifying as BIPOC, women, and/or gender non-conforming.
- Beyond Elijah Rock: The Non-Idiomatic Choral Music of Black ComposersIncludes an embedded spreadsheet of composers and works - and is crowdsourced!
- Composers Diversity CollectiveA small but growing organization of living composers of color - founded by composer Michael Abels. Their directory features links to each composer's page/website!
Publisher/vendor sites, for your convenience
- Boosey and HawkesOne of the leading publishers of our time. This link will take you to their composer index (which composers they represent).
- Schott MusicAnother leading publisher, and one that represents a large number of Asian (particularly Japanese, such as Toshio Hosokawa, who has produced a number of operas) composers, in addition to many familiar Western composers. You can also use the tab at the top of the page to search their site by genre of music.
- Theodore FrontOne of our sheet music vendors that we work with quite a bit. They've even organized pieces by categories such as "Women composers", "Latin American composers" etc. A good way, at the very least, to learn about the existence of BIPOC composers!
- SchirmerAnother publisher company. They have different ways of navigating their site, but perhaps known-item-searching (searching for a specific work you already know about) is probably the easiest way to use their site.
- Sheet Music PlusThe music lib team often relies on Sheet Music Plus to purchase sheet music that is not available through one of our main vendors (in other words, Harrassowitz or Theodore Front). A great resource for finding a wide range of works!