Day 5: meeting



In preparation for tomorrow's premiere, I decided to fold my pink pocket square, shaped like a rose. I nailed it the first try. I sometimes think I spent more time learning how to do this fold than the time I spent making the Jenkins documentary...




The British Library


As some of you know, over the last three years, I have been working on a large project of transferring or digitizing a collection of 2500 reels, opera, recital and concert performances from all over the world. More often than not, the pitch needs to be adjusted on these recordings, and I have been lucky enough to entrust this task to esteemed collector Dr. Timothy Lockley, Professor of Comparative American Studies at the University of Warwick. He not only corrects the pitch, but sends back to me versions that are of better sound quality, patching in missing music and inserting announcements. I am deeply indebted to him for his time, expertise and patience. After he sends me the improved version, I then upload the transfers to a Yahoo file-sharing mailing list called operas_concerts for collectors worldwide to download, thereby preserving this wonderful collection which is full of rarities. I would also like to mention the immense help I am receiving help from fellow collector Michael Scarola in California for cast, date and venue information, as well as proofing the posts I create to be uploaded with the link to the transfers.



Donald Collup and Timothy Lockley


I met Tim at the British Libary and we then walked to a local simple bar and restaurant. I had beer and my first fish 'n chips, a large fish fillet encased in puff pastry. We talked about rescued and buried collections. The collection of the late Bob Fazio, consisting of 9,000 reels, now sits in a university storage locker buried behind theatrical scenery and sets. He said that Britain was not good at preserving recordings, so many things have been lost, i.e., the premieres of Billy Budd and Peter Grimes, Flagstad's final Isolde. It's amazing the wealth of knowledge Tim has about performance history, recording formats and techniques, and what doesn't exist and might exist.

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