GLAM/Newsletter/August 2026/Contents/Italy report
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The Musical Heritage of the Santa Cecilia Conservatory
The Library of the “Santa Cecilia” Conservatory of Music in Rome holds an important historical collection of music books and documents. In 2026, as part of the agreement between Wikimedia Italia and the Central Library of the National Research Council (CNR) for 2026–2027, Santa Cecilia launched, in collaboration with the Central Library of the CNR, an ongoing project dedicated to the digitization and sharing of this heritage.
The initiative has two main goals: to preserve and promote materials of great historical and documentary importance, and to make them more easily accessible for research, teaching, and musical performance. Through the global infrastructure of Wikimedia projects, the project also aims to support the international circulation of the musical heritage preserved in Rome.
The project focuses first of all on three important documentary collections.
The first consists of musical scores and sheet music from the “Diritto d'autore” collection. These materials came to Santa Cecilia as a result of the law on legal deposit, which in 1883 required musical editions from all over Italy to be sent to Santa Cecilia. This collection is an important record of Italian musical culture in the 19th century. The scores and sheet music are therefore not only materials to be preserved, but also documents that provide evidence of part of the musical production of the period.
The digitization work is currently underway. So far, 100 musical scores from the “Diritto d'autore” collection have been digitized and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
The second collection is the Silvestri collection, consisting of 118 volumes containing around 6,000 librettos for operas and ballets. The collection has particular documentary value because it makes it possible to trace musical performances held in the theatres of Milan and Monza from 1670 to 1885.
The third collection includes around 30,000 opera and ballet librettos from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Of these, 21,138 titles come from the collection of the Portuguese collector Manoel Peixoto d’Almeida da Carvalhaes, while 9,700 belong to the Government Libretto Collection. The latter documents the repertoires and activities of opera theatres throughout Europe.
Within the project, librettos therefore have a particularly important role. Their presence in such large collections makes it possible to document repertoires, performances, and theatrical activities over a very long period, from the 17th to the 19th century.
The digitization project could in the future be extended to other materials held by the Library, including the braille music collection, magnetic tapes, and photographic plates. This possible expansion would make it possible to work with different types of documents, continuing the process of promoting historical musical heritage through digitization.
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