Spring 199 2. Volume VI, Number 2. Nota Bene News from the Yale Library Giacomo Meyerbeer at the Ya le Music Library Giacomo Mel'erbeer (Jakob Liebmann Meyer Bee r), th e Berlin composer kno\vn for his Parisian French Grand Operas, was born September 5, 1. 791. In Berlin and Paris, his bicentennial year, September 1991- Se ptember 1992, is bein g celebrated with special exhibits, symposia, a new biography, and new produc- tions of his operas. A bicentennial display currently mo unted at the John Herrick Jackson Music Library exhi bits items from its holdings such as rare first- ed iti on piano/vocal scores of Nleyerbeer's operas, pr ints of hi s compositions for unaccompanied chorus, a man- uscript of a fugue written as an assignment during his student days, volumes from his personal library and even a brief eleven-note autograph musical incipit and signature. French Grand Opera is an opera tic genre that brings together complex o rchestration and vocal writing, spec- tacular scenic effects, and extensive ballet scenes in operas around fOllr hours long. Dissertation research in progress at Yal e examines the large-scale musica l struc- ture devised by Meyerbeer to create a sense of gradu- ally increasin g mu sica l and dramatic momentum in these huge compositions. Rare and unique items frolll several Yale libra ri es support this research. These This engrnvcd ti rle page from Giacomo Mcycrhccr's t 8} 1 opera include complete runs of the nineteenth-century critica l Robert Ie dinble depicts a scene from the middle of Act III. With periodicals lOll mal des dt! bals and Revue et gazelle other scores and manuscripts, it wa s 011 display in the Music musicale in Sterling J"lemorial Library, manuscripts and Library in the ea rl y spring. first editions of operas by Meyerbeer's forerunners Cherubini and Mehul in the Beinecke, publications in rhi s new genre. The "splicing" in this revision is abollt operatic acting performance practice in th e obvious, with light comic scenes and seriolls dramatic Drama Library, and rare recordings of French opera scenes jumbled in together. The juxtaposition of con- in Hi storical Sound Recordings. tra sting musical sty les contributes to a sweeping musi - Yal e holds first-edition scores for both Meyerbeel' cal momentum v·/hich compensares for th e styli stic operas important to this study: Robert Ie diable of awk\va rdn ess of the score. Premiered in 1831, Robert 183 I., Meyerbeer's first Pari sian opera, and Les Ie diable was the greatest critical and popular success at Huguenots of 1836. In Robert Ie diable, the special the Paris Opera in decades. Three morc French G rand mu sical form evolv ed partially by accident, as a res ult Operas followed: Los Huguellots of 1836, Le Pro/,"e!e of a revision fr om one genre to another. Ivleyerbeer had o f r849, and L'A{ricail/e of r86;. nearly fi nished composing Robert Ie diable as a thfee- Meycrbeer's operas were a crucial influence on rhe act comic opera with spoken dialogue on a topic-the operas of Verdi and Wagner, both of w hom utilized devil-then in vogue in popular Parisian .theater, w hen Nleye rbeer's formula for overall musical srructure, the spectacular successes of the first two French Grand and expanded on the Meye rbeerian techniques of rh e- Operas, Auber's La mllette de Portid and Rossini's matic reca ll , continuous melody, an d link ed ensemble Guillaume Tell, inspired him to rewrite Robert Ie diable scenes. Ironically, however, Wagner and his ad herents engin ee red the decline of M eye rbeer's reputation. found in re search libraries easil y ava il able. New modes \Xlagner was an obsc ure and impoverished young co m- of exploiting old information are another considera- pose r in Paris w hile Meyerbeer's popularity was at its ti on. Nlost ei ecrron ic indexin g and absrracting services zenith. Jea lousy and antisemitism motiva ted \X'agner's search rapidly for words and phrases throughout their subsequent anti-Meyerbee r polemic which found emire text. Key-word sea rching and sea rching for trun· acceptance in th e na scent field of musicology. \Vag ner ca ted words vastly expand the utility of such tools as asse rted that Meyerbeer, as a Jew, \vas incapable of cre- th e Oxford Ellglish Dictionary and Disserlatiolls ativity and that his operas are fu ll of "effects without Abstracts Illtemational (186 r- ), both available on cau sesj" \'(Iagner claimed to ha ve been influenced onl y CD-ROM. by German composers. Verdi, in contrast, acknowl- In addition, the Library Sllppo rrs the ne\v modes of edged his debt to Meyerbeer. scholarship that have arisen in classics, patri stics and In other ways 1vleyerbeer's work contributed to the biblical studies, for example, fr o III the conversion of shape of modern o pera: the demand for tickers to his existing coll ection of texts to machine-readab le form. consistently sold-out operas actua ll y inaugurated the The corpus of anciem Greek literature in the Thesaurlls practice of ticket-scalping in Paris, and Meyerbeer Lillguae Craecae, the Greek and Engli sh-language ver- in ve nted th e press conference with refreshments. sions of the Bible incorporated in CD- WORD, and old -KKO'B and new editions of church fathers begin ning to appea r in the Cetedoc Library of Christiall Latill Texts ca n now be explored, compared and manipulated in new Electronic Resources at Ya le wa ys. Finall y, th ere is th e convenience factor. It is Virtually everywhere in the Ya le Library, information, easier to search through the Social Science Citation texts, images, and "meta-information" (info rm ation Illdexes on CD-ROM than in the paper ve rsion. Users about other information sources) are being acquired in ca n save valuable time fo rm erl y invested in mechani- elec tronic formats to co mplement traditional print and ca l, repetitive steps . mi crofonn publications. Librarian s consid er it impor- Electronic information re sources an d text fil es are tant to bu y them even though the purchasing power of defin itely here to Stay. The Yal e Library invests in them the "book budget" is increasingly limited. The reasons carefully and ca miously as th eir cost ma y di splace fo r selecting such resources illustrate the adva ntages other purchases . The proof of such prudence is that of elecrronic media. these resources are ind eed \vell lI sed, and the Ya le com- Librarians judge whether an electtonic publica ti on munity is cla mo ri ng for more. Mo re will come, but broadens the array of informacion sources at Yale. librari ans remain attenti ve to the need for balance in Nexis, for example, rnakes ma ny resources not usuall y our resources, favoring substance above al l. -MAK Eli zabeth Deering Hanscom was the vc r}' first wom an to receive a Yale Ph.D . di ploma due to th e alphabetica l ar rangcmcnr of th e nam es of the women cnndidates. Th e se ven women who received degrees in 1894 made lip one th ird of the docrorn l degree rec ipienrs. This pOrfrnit is in an exh ibit Celebratillg tbe lootb Anniversary of tbe Admission of Womell to tbe Yale Graduate Scboof in Sterl ing ;\tll-moria l Li bra ry. Visitors stud y the exh ibit Rellovat;,tg 011 Edifice of Beauty: Sterfillg Memoriaf Library which opened in Sfo.H;s Memor:1bi lia Room to coincide with the I\-tay wd launching of Yal e's 51·5 bi lli on fundraising cam paign. Nexis NoUJ Available sense is abundantly demonstrated in the exhibition by The Un iversi ty Library and Computing and Informa- numerous works that point, with dazzling precision, tion Systems are pleased to ann ounce the availabil ity of [Q the violence of wa r, the banality of hum an pretense, the Nexis service to all Yale fac ulty and students. Nexis and the d isasters of environmental po llu tion . prov id es access to the full rext of more than 600 news- For many years, Robert Osborn supplied trenchant papers, journals, and wire services including the New political cartoons to The New Republic, while his York Times. Washington Post, Christian Science Moni- drawings and illustrations appeared widely in books 101; Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Africa News, and in magaz ines such as The Atlanl.ic Soviet Press Digest, and Xinhua (New China) News Harpers, Life, and \!ogue. Known for his firmly held Agency. Abstracts appear ing in an additional I ,OOO opini ons, Osborn has offered a sustained commentary sources are also ava il ab le on Nexis. on Am eri can li fe and tim es, his unerrin g li ne assessing The value of the Ncxis se rvice derives from the sheer types as well as individuals: the se naror, the D.A.R., the size of its database an d its pov./cr (0 search th rough bird-watcher, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Dan vast amounts of text for specific words or phrases. A Quayle, Stravinsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Calder. use r CQ uld, for example, search rh e last eleven years of The Beinecke exhibition includes nearl y 100 of the New York Times and fourteen years of the Wa sh- Osborn 's original drawings in watercolor, charcoa l, and ington Post for a personal name, an event, or the title pastel.