This collection belonged to music critic Olin Downes (1886-1955) and was gifted to the Florida State University Music Library by his widow Irene Miles Downes after his death. It contains research notes, correspondence, newspaper clippings, programs, lecture notes, handwritten music, as well as other published and unpublished written materials.
This collection primarily contains published opera, oratorio, and musical theatre libretti, along with a few programs and Metropolitan Opera House Grand Opera Season guides. These are of particular interest in terms of their covers, publication materials, and performance information. Many of the libretti were donated by music critic Olin Downes; these contain handwritten research notes, drafts of reviews, miscellaneous programs and cast lists for the Metropolitan Opera Company. Publication dates range from 1804-1960s, and composers represented include Eugen D'Albert, Louise Aubert, J.S. Bach, L.V. Beethoven, Vincenzo Bellini, Georges Bizet, François-Adrien Boieldieu, Arrigo Boito, Benjamin Britten, Charles Wakefield Cadman, Francesco Cavalli, Gustave Charpentier, Domenico Chimarosa, Frederick Shepherd Converse, Walter Damrosch, Claude Debussy, Léo Delibes, Gaetano Donizetti, Frank Dumont, Manuel De Falla, Henry Fevrier, Carlisle Floyd, Alberto Franchetti, Vittorio Giannini, Umberto Giordano, Christophe Willibald Von Gluck, Charles Gounod, Henry Hadley, Jacques F. Haley, George Frederick Handel, Howard Hanson, Frederic Hart, Ferdinand, Hérold, Paul Hindemith, Arthur Honegger, Engelbert Humperdinck, Leoš Janáček, Sidney Jones, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Ernst Krenek, Reginald De Koven, Charles Lecocq, Franz Lehar, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Franco Leoni, Luigi Mancinelli, Pietro Mascagni, Victor Masse, Jules Massenet, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Isaac Hickman Meredith, Giancarlo Meyerbeer, Darius Milhaud, Italo Montemezzi, Claudio Monteverdi, Modest Moussorgsky, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Jacques Offenbach, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Errico Petrella, Amilcare Ponchielli, Sergei Prokofieff, Giacomo Puccini, Henri Rabaud, Maurice Ravel, Ottorino Respighi, Ernest Reyer, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Lodovico Rocca, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Bernard Rogers, Ludwig Roselius, Gioacchino Rossini, Anton Grigorievich Rubinstein, Camille Saint-Saëns, Shanghai Shi Long jiang song ju zuo, Arnold Schönberg, Friedrich Smetana, Gaspare Spontini, William Grant Still, Deems Taylor, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, The Ukrainian National Chorus, Guiseppe Verdi, Giovanni Verga, Ignatz Waghalter, Richard Wagner, David Ward-Steinman, Carl Maria von Weber, Jaromir Weinberger Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, Kurt Weill, Riccardo Zandonai, along with the United States Army.
