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This Week In History, Library Style! Sept 30: Flute

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Libraries are places where we connect people to information that may be useful or interesting to them. Looking at some history, and connecting it to the materials we may have in our libraries, can be a good way to convince patrons to use and enjoy all the things we provide!

This week we are looking at September 30. Of course a lot of things have happened on this date – news and the big stories are the unusual things that are going on around us. One interesting thing that has happened today in 1791: Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute premiered in Vienna, Austria.

Opera has an image of being a very high-brow fancy art, and sure, that’s true enough. But the stories in opera are very simple, and easily understandable by anyone.

“In this opera, the Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro; instead, he learns the high ideals of Sarastro’s community and seeks to join it. Separately, then together, Tamino and Pamina undergo severe trials of initiation, which end in triumph, with the Queen and her cohorts vanquished. The earthy Papageno, who accompanies Tamino on his quest, fails the trials completely but is rewarded anyway with the hand of his ideal female companion, Papagena.”

Bring this day in history into your library! You can do a few different kinds of programming and displays, and we have a few suggestions to help you get started: set up a display of books on music, read some biographies about composers, look at maps of Austria, bring in some instruments to the library to try, look at how math influences the writing of music, draw pictures of operas, set up a display of books about adventures and quests, books about romance.

Here are a few books you might add to your collection or share with your patrons – or just enjoy yourself!