Like many of those with collections antedating the Compact Disc, I have lost more than a few LPs to scratches, warping and the seemingly endless array of terminal illnesses which plague vinyl. That's bad enough when a precious recital bites the dust and even worse when a multidisc recording is marred, but when a reference tome such as the four-volume Record of Singing loses a disc, the whole set is compromised. As jelly bread always falls jelly-side-down, the one disc lost from forty-seven is the one needed.
Other problems with those LP reference sets are indexing and accessing. For example, The Record of Singing indexes by singer, but enters only one artist for each selection, losing reference to participants in ensembles. Each of the indexes covers only one volume so that a singer whose career extended across the often arbitrary categories must be investigated in two or more books. Once found, the reference points to a volume, side and band which must be found and cued. Therefore a set of integrated indexes offers an advantage in locating selections even for someone whose collection is intact. Access is simplified as well: to hear a selection found in an index, one simply clicks on its entry.
To date, there are two such replacement volumes available, each containing all of the music without the booklets or books packaged with the recordings. That omission comes neither from lack of space nor from lack of appreciation for the research and documentation, but from respect for the quality of work they represent.
At this writing, two replacement discs are available from the distributor, http://www.operamogul.com/ and from dealers such as House of Opera at http://www.houseofopera.com/ and Premiere Opera at http://www.premiereopera.com/
Singers on Record is all of the music of the four-volume EMI set with an integral index in the sequence of issue and a cross-index by all named singers.
Mapleson and Wagner provides the music of four different sets and three individual LPs. The EMI sets of "Wagner on Record" and "Sänger auf dem grünen Hügel" are supplemented with Acanta's "Richard Wagner - Sein Werk in dokumentarischen Aufnahmen" - 36 LP's indexed as in the original issues, by title over all sets and by singer over all sets.
The invaluable LP issue of the Mapleson cylinders from the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center is supplemented by three LPs from IRCC. The IRCC transfers duplicate those of the Library but were made at earlier playings of the cylinders and with significant technical differences.
These discs are available as CD-Rs, individually recorded CD-ROMs. One advantage of that approach is that the master can be updated whenever significant corrections are made. Since the first issue of the first replacement disc, a few minor errors in audio transfer and several errors of indexing (both mine and the original authors') have been corrected. I do not anticipate that there will ever be a "final" version since experience and research ensure a continuing, diminishing series of improvements.
Mail me at operas@mrichter.com