Magzoid Magazine - Luxury Magazine in the Creative Space | Feb 2023

ART NEWS
A century’s worth of audio is preserved
on wax cylinders
The first recording, which was distorted,
was of a child’s voice. The child was
speaking to whoever was listening and
wished them a Merry Christmas. The
second recording, though still noisy, captured
the end of the second act of “Aida,” sung
by German singer Johanna Gadski at the
Metropolitan Opera House in the spring of 1903.
The third recording was the clearest yet. It
was the waltz from “Romeo and Juliet” from the
Met, sung by Australian soprano Nellie Melba.
The recordings were found at the New York
Public Library in a conference room. They were
dug up from a much older source: wax cylinders.
These recordings were made in the late 1800s
and were made by Lionel Mapleson, a librarian
at the Metropolitan Opera. He recorded both
opera performances he saw as part of his job
and the everyday life of his family.
The library preserves audio recordings on
wax cylinders. Some of these recordings have
been around for a long time, and some are
new recordings. The library is going to digitize
these recordings so that they can be accessed
and used by people in the future.
The machine will allow the library to play
a few broken Mapleson cylinders. Nobody
alive has ever heard them, so this might be a
chance to hear something new from the earliest
moments in recording history.
The Mapleson cylinders were originally in
the library’s collection, but a new batch was
recently donated by Alfred Mapleson, the Met
librarian’s great-grandson. This donation was
accompanied by a collection of diaries written
by Lionel Mapleson that chronicled both his
daily life and the Metropolitan Opera’s calendar.
The diaries provide extra context to both
Mapleson’s audio recordings and the broader
world of New York opera. For example, one
entry from New Year’s Day in 1908 noted the
“tremendous reception” for a performance by
Gustav Mahler. Another described the time that
Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, “in rage,”
dismissed his orchestra because of noise on
the roof.
The diary is very important because it gives
us a detailed look at Bob Kosovsky’s life in both
New York and England since he went back to
visit his family every summer.
The library got a machine from its creator,
Nicholas Bergh, last spring. This machine
is from the 1800s and it was used to record
Western music. Nicholas Bergh says that this
machine is very special because it was used
to document what was happening in theatres
in the 1800s.
“It’s in better hands at the New York Public
Library,” he said. The recordings had originated
at the Metropolitan Opera; now, they would
reside nearby forever. “Let’s keep it in New
York because this is where it all happened. I
like that idea.”
- news@magzoid.com
www.magzoid.com February 2023
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