Liceu's historical archive can now be consulted online

28/01/2015

The Historical Archive of the Societat del Gran Teatre del Liceu and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona recently presented the new website, designed by members of the university's Humanities Library.

The modern techniques of scanning, digital identification and data search allow us to relate as we had never been able to do before all the varied and complex documentation generated by an opera house. That will provide users with an utmost important tool with which to discover its different aspects, such as its history, technical advances in the scenic arts, musical scores, administrative documents, etc.


The continuity of the activity of the theatre, which was maintained even during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), allows to relate the different materials between them. This goal is considered to be the hallmark of the project: we will not only accede, for example, to an isolated scenography but enable its dialog with all the rest of documents: maps, programmes, photographs, collected letters, sheet music or administrative documents. Also, the functioning of a theatre cannot be explained like a closed entity in itself. It is the result of an intense flow of artistic, commercial and technical exchanges. We have enriched, whenever possible, the framework of relations of the materials of the Liceu with the international musical activity of its time.

The organisation of the online consultation is organised based on the various typologies, and according to the various types of format, which will be completed as the project grows. In the first level, the documentation is classified in the following collections: management of the institution, administration, technical documentation, scenographies, photographs, posters and scores. The website also offers the user the chance to search in different modes, by authors, works or subjects. Searching under “Works” will relate all elements connected to the piece, something which is not very common in opera house archives. An index by dates allows users to find each year's main technical, artistic and historical figures.

The website already includes 30% of the Liceu's material. The digitalised documents have been deposited in the UAB Digital Repository of Documents.

A Website for Researchers and Society

“We created a web with society in general in mind, although we know it is of great value to researchers as well. We wanted to make sure everyone could enjoy the great amount of documents from the Liceu's historical archive. That is why the website is easy to navigate and quickly search for items of interest as well as all things related", explains Francesc Cortés, professor of the UAB Department of Art and Musicology and director of the historical archive's digitalisation and cataloguing project.

Currently, the website offers the possibility of consulting complete document series, such as the “concierge's book”, 26 volumes which cover the day to day life of the opera house; and 46 books with documentation from assemblies; basic to learn more about the opera house; and several maps and drawings, including technical drawings of the building, restoration reports and the reconstruction after the 1861 fire. Another collection includes almost all the photographs and scenographic plates.

Opera booklets and other performance material will soon be made available, as well as archives from the Spanish Civil War period, in which the Liceu became the "National Theatre of Catalonia" and musical scores.

The archive is formed by more than 50,000 historical documents and objects dating back to the founding of the opera house in 1847 to the 1981-1982 season, in which all management was passed on to the Societat del Gran Teatre del Liceu.

A Multidisciplinary Team

Fifteen UAB researchers and specialists are working on this ambitious digitalisation and cataloguing project of the opera house's historical archive under the direction of Francesc Cortès. Researchers from the MUSC (Musics in Contemporary Society) group are conducting the study and expert analysis of the documents. The cataloguing and computer development tasks for the website are being carried out by members of the Humanities Library, under the direction of Mercè Bausili, and with the support of students from the bachelor's and master's degree in Musicology. The Computer Vision Centre's Document Analysis and Object Recognition groups, led by Josep Lladós, are in charge of the automatic extraction of information, including the transcription of texts and recognition of graphic documents, and the development of applications for the virtual and interactive library. The digitalisation of the documents was carried out by Artyplan.