In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Lionel Mapleson, then the librarian at New York's Metropolitan Opera, did something new: He took an Edison "Home" model phonograph and recorded operas with an ...

Performances in N.Y.C. Advertisement Supported by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts acquired a machine that transfers recordings from the fragile format. Then a batch of cylinders ...

Before audio playlists, before cassette tapes and even before records, there were wax cylinders — the earliest, mass-produced way people could both listen to commercial music and record themselves. In ...

It was just after the turn of the century, in the golden age of U.S. opera. On the stage of the Metropolitan the great Australian-born Soprano Nellie Melba was singing Marguerite’s spinning-wheel aria ...

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THE first recording, swathed in sheets of distortion, was nonetheless recognisable as a child’s voice – small, nervous, encouraged by his father – wishing a very Merry Christmas to whoever was ...