This man's recordings spent years under a recliner — they've now found a new home
More than a century ago, a Met librarian made some of the first live music recordings. Now, (with an assist from NPR) 16 of the Mapleson Cylinders are joining the New York Public Library collection.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Lionel Mapleson, then the librarian at New York's Metropolitan Opera, did something new: He took an Edison "Home" model phonograph and recorded operas with an orchestra as they were being sung on stage.
He experimented with recording from places like the prompter's booth, but finally landed on the catwalks high above the stage. Microphones weren't invented yet, so he used a giant horn, perhaps six feet long, to record acoustically.
"The Mapleson Cylinders,
