Chelsea Hoover Dataset Description, Phase I and Phase II
I will be exploring the operas of composers from the Romantic Era, which spanned from the early nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This period of music was characterized by the following stylistic elements: emphasis on lyrical melodies, vagueness of harmony, expansion of the orchestra (particularly in the brass sections), emphasis on themes (such as nationalism or nature), and stark dynamic contrasts (such as soft immediately followed by loud). Operas from this era were generally divided into the following two categories: Italian and German Romantic. Italian operas from this period emphasized bel canto style (beautiful singing) arias that showcased the singers. German Romantic operas, on the other hand, emphasized the following: use of leitmotifs (which were leading musical motifs that identified characters and situations in the plot), plots with supernatural elements, and virtuosic orchestral writing.
The Romantic opera composers on which I intend to focus will include the following: Giuseppe Verdi, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetono Donizetti, Gioachino Rossini, Giacomo Puccini, Richard Wagner, Carl Maria von Weber, Richard Strauss, and several others. The text will consist of English translations of libretti to those operas. The spreadsheet will include the following: dates in which each opera premiered, locations and geographic coordinates where the premiere performances occurred, and basic information about the opera (i.e. the name and the composer). The images will consist of pictures of the composers, posters and scenes from the operas, and pictures of the geographic locations the operas premiered.
Phase I:
Geographic locations:
1. Opera: Aida--premiere: Cairo, Egypt--coordinates: lat: 30.05; long: 31.23
2. Opera: Il Trovatore--premiere: Rome, Italy--coordinates: lat: 41.9; long: 12.5
3. Opera: La Traviata--premiere: Venice, Italy--coordinates: lat: 45.44; long: 12.33
4. Opera: Nabucco--premiere: Milan, Italy--coordinates: lat: 45.46; long: 9.18
5. Opera: Don Carlos--premiere: Bologna, Italy--coordinates: lat: 44.5075; long: 11.35
6. Opera: La forza del destino--premiere: St. Petersburg, Russia--coordinates: lat: 59.95; long: 30.3
7. Opera: Macbeth--premiere: Florence, Italy--coordinates: lat: 43.78; long:11.25
8. Opera: Guillaume Tell--premiere: Paris, France--coordinates: lat: 48.8567; long:2.3508
9. Opera: Lucia di Lammermoor--premiere: Naples, Italy--coordinates: lat: 40.845; long:14.258
10. Opera: Flying Dutchman--premiere: Dresden, Germany--coordinates:lat: 51.03; long:13.73
Phase II:
My rationale for focusing on operas was that my educational background was in music performance, and this project gave me an opportunity to expand my knowledge on something that greatly interests me. Furthermore, operas were a good medium to explore music and meet the requirements for digitally representing text, images, and video.
In assembling this project, I learned that 500, 000 words is a LOT of text, and I had to be flexible about changing the scope of my project. (I had originally intended to focus on the operas of Verdi, but in order to meet the minimum text corpus requirements, I had to expand it to operas from the Romantic Era.) I have also learned, thanks to my Humanities Consultant Librarian, that the Internet Archive is a great resource for finding text.
The sources of my material for text included the Index to Opera and Ballet Sources Online, murashev.com, OperaGlass, and OperaFolio. The IOBSO contains digital files of the libretto text and also includes a "full text" link to be able to view the text of the opera in rdf format. Murashev.com is a site designed for opera lovers by music enthusiast Dmitry Murashev that contains original opera libretto and line-by-line translations in English and other languages. OperaGlass is from the site opera.stanford.edu and contains libretti, synopses of the operas, and performance histories. I also used OperaFolio to find libretti and help jog my brain for more Romantic operas to include.