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References and Resources for Metastasio Research

  • The Metastasio Collection - Western Libraries - Western University 
    The Metastasio Collection at the UWO Music Library is an adjunct to The Opera Collection, and gathers together opera scores and libretti based on original libretti by Pietro Metastasio (1698 - 1782).
    Metastasian libretti are also included in the Albert Schatz Collection of Opera Librettos (held at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC). The Music Library owns a copy of the Schatz libretti on microfilm. The individual titles for these libretti will not be found on the Western Libraries Catalogue, therefore users must consult the published print catalogue located in our Reference collection: ML 136.L3C36.
  • Albert Schatz Collection | Library of Congress
    “Albert Schatz (1839-1910) was a German music dealer with life-long interest in opera and its history. In 1873, when Schatz assumed ownership of the Musikalienhandlung Ludwig Trutschel Nachfolger in Rostock, Germany, he confirmed his intent to write a comprehensive history of opera through the study of primary sources. Research for the book necessitated extensive travel throughout Europe to collect libretti including many first and early Italian, German and French editions from the 17th and 18th centuries: in the end, his collection totaled 12,000 operatic and 238 oratorio and cantata libretti.”
  • Oxford Music Online - Metastasio
    “Grove Music Online is the world’s premier online music encyclopedia, offering comprehensive coverage of music, musicians, music-making, and music scholarship.”
    Linked here is the biographical article for Pietro [Trapassi] Metastasio, written by Don Neville
  • Pietro Metastasio (Pietro Trapassi) – Liber Liber
    “Liber Liber is a non-profit cultural association whose aim is the promotion of any kind of artistic and intellectual expression. In particular, it is an attempt to draw humanistic and scientific culture together thanks to the qualified use of informatic technologies in the humanistic field.”
    Available above are full works and correspondence by Pietro Metastasio in PDF format with CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licenses
  • RISM Online
    “The Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) - International Inventory of Musical Sources - is an international, non-profit organization that aims to comprehensively document extant musical sources worldwide: manuscripts, printed music editions, writings on music theory, and libretti that are found in libraries, archives, churches, schools, and private collections.
    URLs in RISM Online are guaranteed to be authoritative, stable, and cite-able. You can bookmark, cite, and share URLs among colleagues, with an institutional commitment that they will persist. This includes links to searches and previews, allowing users to share their complex queries with the knowledge that the recipient will see, as close as possible, the same view.”
  • Sigla - Répertoire International des Sources Musicales 
    “RISM assigns an abbreviation, called a library siglum, to institutions worldwide that hold musical sources or material related to the research of music. As of January 2024, there are about 8,800 sigla in RISM.”

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