Metadata: Collection of Librettos and Plays
Collection
- Country:
- Russia
- Holding institution:
- Russian Institute of Art History
- Holding institution (official language):
- Российский институт истории искусств
- Postal address:
- 190000, St. Petersburg, Isaakievskaia pl., d. 5
- Phone number:
- (812) 315-45-49
- Web address:
- http://artcenter.ru/structure/kabinet-rukopisej/
- Email:
- spb@artcenter.ru
- Reference number:
- F. 40
- Title:
- Collection of Librettos and Plays
- Title (official language):
- Cобрание либретто и пьес
- Creator/accumulator:
- Rappoport, R M
- Date(s):
- 1779/1970
- Language:
- Russian
- Yiddish
- French
- German
- Extent:
- 1,241 archival storage units
- Type of material:
- Textual material
- Physical condition:
- Good
- Scope and content:
-
Op. 1 includes handwritten and printed copies of librettos, including by Mozart, Salieri, Giacomo Meyerbeer, Domenico Cimarosa, A. A. Al’iabev, A. P. Borodin, A. S. Dargomyzhskii, M. P. Mussorgskii, N. A. Rimskii-Korsakov, P. I. Tchaikovsky and others, as well as books on the history of music, a collection of portraits of musical and theatre figures, etc.
Materials pertaining to Jewish history and culture include lithograph copies issued by various publishing houses of St. Petersburg and Kiev of the librettos of A. G. Rubinshtein’s operas The Maccabees (1877, 1878, 1885, 1900), The Shulamite (1901), and The Tower of Babel (1889); A. N. Serov’s Judith (1889, 1901); V. S. Serova’s Uriel Acosta (based on the play by Karl Gutzkow) (1885); and Fromental Halévy’s The Jewess (La Juive) (1875), with a newspaper clipping of an announcement of a performance of this opera at Parma’s Grand Italian Opera Theatre (undated).
Op. 2 includes lithograph copies of Perets Hirshbeyn’s play The Aspiration of Young Jewry (St. Petersburg, 1910; translation from the Yiddish by Iu. Iulin), with a catalogue of other plays issued by the publisher, including Ia. Gordin’s Mirele Efros (translated from the Yiddish by S. Gen); Iu. Iulin’s Servants of the Lord Adonai, Sholem Aleichem’s The Engagement (translated from the Yiddish by Iu. Iulin), and Andrzej Marek (Marek Arnsztejn)’s Queen Sabbath (A Tragedy of a Jewish Girl) (St. Petersburg, 1913).
- Archival history:
- The libretto collection is based on the collection of R M Rappoport (1860-1939), an engineer at Leningrad’s Krasnyi Putilovets metallurgy plant who loved opera and collected material on opera history. The collection was transferred to the State Research Institute of Theatre and Music (NII TIM) in 1940; it was subsequently (until 1968) supplemented with materials received from various organisations and individuals.
- Administrative/biographical history:
-
The Russian Institute of Art History (RIII RAS) is a research institute of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. It was founded in 1912 by Count V P Zubov on the model of Florence’s Istituto statale d’arte. Originally it was called the Institute of Art History and was housed in the mansion of V P Zubov. After the October Revolution, Zubov transferred his home to the new government and the institute became a state institution, in 1920 receiving the new title of Russian Institute of Art History. It has undergone several name changes over the course of its existence – from 1924-31, it was called the State Institute of Art History; from 1933-37, the State Academy of Art History; from 1958-62, the State Research Institute of Theatre, Music, and Cinematography; and since 1992, the Russian Institute of Art History. The institute’s staff included Iu N Tynianov, B M Eikhenbaum, B V Asaf’ev, V M Zhirmunskii, A V Preobrazhenskii and other well-known literary critics and musicologists.
The Manuscripts Office (formerly the Historiography Office, the Office of Archival Fonds) of the Russian Institute of Art History features a collection of unique documents covering Russian musical and theatre life of the 18th to 20th centuries. It was organised in 1938, when the institute received collections of the Leningrad Philharmonic’s Museum of Music History. The Manuscripts Office currently has 130 fonds of personal provenance, as well as a number of other collections.
- Access points: locations:
- Kiev
- Russia
- St Petersburg
- Access points: persons/families:
- Hirshbeyn, Perets
- Sholem Aleichem
- Subject terms:
- Literature
- Literature--Novels, poetry, and plays
- Music
- Newspaper clippings
- System of arrangement:
- The fonds comprises two series (op. 1 – the libretto collection, in two parts; op. 2 – the play collection), arranged according to the subject-alphabetical principle.
- Finding aids:
- Inventories are available.
- Yerusha Network member:
- Jewish Theological Seminary
