The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
Behind the Curtain at the
Library for the Performing Arts
Fun Facts
•
Only 30% of the Library for the Performing Arts' materials are books;
historic audio recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence,
sheet music, set, costume, lighting and mechanical designs, press clippings,
programs, posters, and photographs make up the majority of the Library's
holdings.
•
Bravo! Bravo! The Billy Rose Theatre Collection has received two Tonys:
one in 1956 for "Distinguished Service to the Theatre" and another, a
Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre, given in 2001 to the Theatre
on Film and Tape Archive.
How's That Again?
Many of the
reference questions the Library gets are not spoken, but sung,
hummed, or whistled. Many patrons come seeking songs and
recordings, and sometimes the questions require intricate interpretations.
For example, there's the patron who wanted "The Deflated Mouse"
and after some negotiation, the librarians discovered that
she was looking for the score of Johann Strauss's Die
Fledermaus!
Another patron
requested Mozart's "I'm inclined to knock music" which was his
spin on Mozart's Eine kleine Nachtmusik. More than
one opera-lover has changed the sex of the title character of
Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov to Doris Godunov!
The staff's
favorite such incident was the gentleman who very politely requested
a recording of the "Buttocks Pressing Song." He stumped
all the most knowledgeable music librarians, until he hummed a
bit of the song and one librarian recognized it as the 19th-century
Russian song, Oh, could I but express in song! |
• Who might you see
researching for their next big role at the Library? Al Pacino, Tommy Lee
Jones, Claire Bloom, Rosemary Harris, Bernadette Peters, Joe Mantegna,
Kevin Kline, Tony Randall, Sam Waterston, Bette Midler, Cecilia Bartoli,
Liza Minnelli, Julie Taymor, Julie Andrews, Eric Stoltz, Jimmy Smits,
and Kevin Spacey have used the collections. Frank Langella, Irene Worth,
Cherry Jones, Max Roach, Suzanne Farrell, and James Levine have participated
in its free public programs.
• Who
else has utilized the collections at the Library for the Performing Arts?
Nora Ephron, Delia Ephron, Joel Schumacher, Joan Micklin Silver, John
Simon, and Oliver Stone.
•
Even though memorabilia and relics are not included in The New York Public
Library's collection policy, the Music Division counts a lock of Franz
Liszt's hair among its items.
•
Would you believe that some valuable material in the Library's collections
has come to the Library for the Performing Arts because landlords were
cleaning out vacated apartments?
• The
oldest item in the Music Division is probably a manuscript of a Gregorian
chant from the early 11th-century. It is written in St. Gall neumes, one
of the styles of music notation in use in Europe from the late 9th century.
•
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound maintains a compendium
of accent tapes which are heavily used by performers when they are either
preparing for auditions, or perfecting their foreign accents after being
cast in productions.
•
Among the famous alumni of the Circulating Collections staff are film
director Barry Sonnenfeld, whose films include the hits The Addams
Family and Men in Black, and Michael Starobin, a well-known
orchestrator and arranger for Broadway musicals and films such as Falsettos,
Sunday in the Park with George, Assassins, and the Disney animated
film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Both worked as clerks
in the circulating recordings unit. Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright
Paula Vogel was an employee of TOFT (Theatre on Film and Tape).
•
The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives also has many plays, scenes from
plays, and monologues, featuring artists such as Sarah Bernhardt, Ellen
Terry, John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, Tallulah Bankhead, and Laurence
Olivier which have been frequently used as references by performers such
as Christopher Reeve, Robin Williams, Roger Rees, and Al Pacino.
•
The Jerome Robbins Archive of the Recorded Moving Image now contains nearly
40,000 reels, which represent almost 16,000 titles.
•
The Circulating Orchestra Collection provides full sets of orchestral
scores and parts to amateur, community, and professional orchestras among
its users. Some 2,000 works are available.
•
The Dance Division began an Oral History Project in 1974 to record the
biographies of dancers in a range of styles. At least ten interviews
are audiotaped each year.
•
Wax recordings? Yes! Lionel Mapleson was so fascinated by his new Edison
Phonograph that he created the earliest recordings of live performances
at the Metropolitan Opera on wax cylinders. The highly fragile recordings
made between 1900 and 1904 feature performances of some of the Met's great
stars including Marcella Sembrich, Lillian Nordica, Albert Alvarez, and
Jean de Reszke.
•
Since 1940 The Billy Rose Theatre Collection has kept a "guest book" where
the famous and the not-yet-famous have signed their names: Lillian Gish,
Otis Skinner, Daniel Frohman, Dustin Hoffman, Leslie Uggams, Al Hirschfeld
(who drew a self-portrait), Geraldine Page, Joel Grey, Elia Kazan, and
many more.
•
The oldest item in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division is Trattato dell'arte
del ballo, handwritten about 1460 by Guglielmo Ebreo da Pesaro. A
short treatise on the art of dancing is followed by choreographic descriptions
of fifty-five dances that were performed in the princely courts of the
Italian Renaissance.
•
Among the films in the Dance Division is home-movie footage by a Broadway
stagehand, photographed from the wings, the earliest films by Thomas Edison
from the 1890s, telecasts of Rudolf Nureyev's performances, and the most
recent performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
•
The oldest document in the Theatre Collection is a proclamation by King
Charles II of England on the sale of tickets.
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