News archive – In the news
Luigi Marchesi - A famous singer from the 18th century
Luigi Marchesi (1754-1829) – one of the most famous singers at the end of the eighteenth century – will be the focus of attention in the next few days with large celebrations in Italy. An exhibit dedicated to the Italian castrato, whose career began in 1765 as a choirboy at...
15 October 2015
Using RISM for Genealogy
This article by Peter Teuthorn was originally published in his Genealogie-Feuilleton in an earlier form and is reprinted here with kind permission. Compositions by Christian Balthasar Teuthorn found using RISM Today’s genealogy no longer wears itself out by piling up ancestry data. Genealogists now look at the social context of...
6 August 2015
Help solve a 90-year-old musical mystery
A competition has been set up by the Italian music monthly Musica to find works by the almost unknown Italian-Argentinian composer Rodolfo Zanni (1901-1927). After his mysterious death, his works completely disappeared. He composed over 80 works: symphonies, overtures, ballets, sonatas, and two operas. Can you find any? A worldwide...
30 March 2015
From the First [最初] to the Best [最高]: Ewha Music Research Institute
The following is by Hyun Kyung Chae of RISM Korea and was originally published in the newsletter Ewha’s Research Power for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (February 2015). It is reprinted here with kind permission. The Ewha Music Research Institute (EMRI) is consistently gaining recognition as a hub for the...
12 March 2015
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day
February 14 – Valentine’s Day – is the day of love in many countries. Today we’re featuring a small selection of Romeo and Juliet compositions from our online catalog for all you romantics out there (and also non-romantics). The results list shows almost 400 entries. Among these are Vincenzo Bellini’s...
13 February 2015
Antonio Cesti's Orontea
Yesterday, February 1, the Oper Frankfurt celebrated the premiere of Antonio Cesti’s opera Orontea. Almost all of the over 100 records in the RISM database by Antonio Cesti are for cantatas or individual opera arias with continuo accompaniment—including four arias from Orontea. Of the eleven operas by Cesti known today,...
2 February 2015
Knowing what exists: Union of German Academies renews support for RISM Germany
This article is by our RISM Germany colleague Karl Wilhelm Geck and has been republished from BIS: Das Magazin der Bibliotheken in Sachsen 7:3 (2014), 179 (CC-BY SA): Where the documentation of music manuscripts is concerned, the benchmark is the online union catalog http://opac.rism.info. Since its release in 2010, it...
15 January 2015
Restitution made easy
On the heels of our visit to Nuremberg for AIBM conference in September comes this story by our colleague Guido Kraus about the history of some of the rare items at the Nuremberg Public Library. Two valuable items found their way back to Germany after having been in the United...
15 December 2014
Arias from St. Petersburg
The new CD St. Petersburg by Cecilia Bartoli will certainly be a present under many Christmas trees this year. The Italian singer consulted the archives of the Mariinsky Theater Library in St. Petersburg (RUS-SPtob) for this album. These holdings are not yet cataloged in RISM but many of the arias...
8 December 2014
Hasse's Siroe in Versailles
On November 26, the opera Siroe, re di Persia by Johann Adolf Hasse will premiere at the Opera Royal de Versailles. This is a nice opportunity to take a look at the more than 150 sources for this opera that are in the RISM database. Two sources from Dresden are...
24 November 2014
