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.”