Manuscript Opera scores of the 18th century in the Bavarian State Library: Cataloguing, digitization and web-based presentation

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In the 18th century, the Munich electoral court was one of the major centers of European opera north of the Alps. At that time a standing opera with its own permanent ensemble existed only in five other residences. The most important genre in this period was the Italian opera seria. In early and mid-18th century most of the operas were composed by the court music directors Pietro Torri and Andrea Bernasconi. From 1767 another opera composer annualy recieved the contract for the opera seria in the carnival season ("Carnival opera") at the electoral court, including Tommaso Traetta, Antonio Sacchini, Pietro Pompeo Sales, Alessio Prati, Antonio Tozzi, Antoni Salieri, Josef Mysliveek and Joseph Willibald Michl. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose "Idomeneo" was premiered in 1781 in Munich, is part of this tradition of the Munich carnival operas. 213 manuscript opera scores from the period of about 1689 to about 1820 are kept in the music department of the Bavarian State Library. Many of the scores directly reflect the Munich opera history. The detailed online cataloguing of these unique manuscripts has already been completed to a large extent by RISM. The objectives of the project are the digitization and online accessibility of the 18th century manuscript opera scores of the Bavarian State Library, as well as the cataloguing of scores not yet contained in the RISM database.