Catalogue of the Leroy Ehrenreich tape recordings collection

Background information

The Bern Academy of the Arts (Hochschule der Künste Bern, HKB) preserves the Ehrenreich Collection of opera recordings, a collection of over 2000 reel-to-reel tapes comprising around 10’000 hours of mainly bootleg recordings by the self-proclaimed “pirate queen” Leroy Allan Ehrenreich (1929–2016). 

Opera aficionado Ehrenreich's collection consists of unique live recordings from opera houses in New York (and beyond) as well as complementary radio recordings and commercial recordings, capturing a comprehensive sound picture of the opera scene between 1965 and 2010.

The present catalogue is a working tool that has yet to undergo revision, not a definitive publication. The spreadsheet is based on Ehrenreich's own catalogue of his recordings listed by performer, which he originally wrote on word processor files. While the collection content is more easily accessible using the spreadsheet, please note that the catalogue records have not been cross-checked tape-in-hand and no warranty is made as to the correctness of the data. 

For more information see also:https://www.hkb-interpretation.ch/projekte/ehrenreich-collectionhttps://www.hkb-interpretation.ch/projekte/met-live

Navigating the catalogue

Each line in the spreadsheet describes the recording of one performance. In many cases, though, unclean data resulted in duplicate lines for the same recording. 

The columns are labelled with the following abbreviations:

com
composer

opr
work

per
description of the performance

performers
individual performers (orchestras are not listed)

ide
shelf number of the original tape

year
year of the performance

date
performance date (YYYY-MM-DD), if present

live
live recording (a blank field suggests studio recording)

pfr
piano accompaniment (a blank field suggests orchestral accompaniment)

src
source of the tape: BC for radio broadcast, LP for long playing record, CD for compact disc, Video for television broadcast (a blank field suggests bootleg recording)

digi
the HKB holds a digitized copy of the tape 

lnb
line number of the original catalogue

record_master
field used for sorting