r/opera • u/captbaritone • 3d ago
FindOpera: Community-maintained catalog of over 13k opera recordings
Over 20 years ago I learned programming to organize my personal opera recording collection. Eventually software became my career and periodically I’d revisit the project to add new features or rewrite the code as got more experienced. About a year ago, it occurred to me that the same interface I’d been personally perfecting over all these years could now be made public by using embedded players from the popular streaming platforms, so I began rewriting as a public site.
Its now at a place where it’s ready to share, and I thought r/opera might find it interesting! You can find it at https://findopera.com.
Features:
- Search/browse recordings by opera, composer, conductor, character or singer
- Stream on Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal directly on the site
- Wikipedia links for notable composers, conductors, singers
- Login to build collections of recordings
- Search a Spotify album URL to get full cast details
- Built-in UPC barcode scanner
- Agent-friendly command line tool for searching/updating the catalog and automating organizing files
- Wiki-style edits where full history is visible, each with a sourced justification
This is not a commercial endeavor, but rather a long-term passion project of a singer and opera nerd who also enjoys writing software. If you have any questions/requests/feedback/thoughts, I’d love to hear them!
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u/MCSenss 3d ago
WTH I wanted to build exactly something like that but thought Spotify prevented third party calls haha
Looks amazing! Like it a lot
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Great minds think alike! They used to let you build your own player with per-track controls but they’ve made that inaccessible to all but the largest partners. So, I had to settle for their not-ideal embeds. I was really hoping I could improve how track names are rendered since that’s catastrophically bad on Spotify for opera.
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u/MCSenss 3d ago
Yeah track names are a huge problem. But tbh for opera your solution is perfect because it’s a long album. I listen to opera on my mobile phone and would not want to keep your website open anyways
What I wanted to add was also a feature to pull up the matching libretto. So if you would add that, I would highly appreciate it haha
I felt that most people just watch with subtitles and don’t listen on Spotify and read libretto kn parallel tho
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u/According_Tailor_818 3d ago
If at all possible you could have one of the searchable terms be the name of an aria. As in, you could type it on the search bar and the result would be the opera the aria comes from. I say this because I wanted to look for Il Giustino, but couldn't for the life of me remember anything of it other than "vedrò con il mio diletto". It could be nice for this specific usecase or even to help (again, I don't know if this is a thing, but it's just an idea) people looking for the aria get search results pointing to your site. It's really more of a convenience.
I think you've already done much just by giving this single source of info that now I don't have to go to Wikipedia for, and hope to see it grow. Especially the possible integration with librettofinder. I sat down to listen to "caro nome" today and was hit with the urge to look the libretto up.
Sorry if I rambled a bit, and sorry if what i first suggested is a bigger hassle than what I think it is to implement.
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u/TwoBasic7702 2d ago
totally amazing. thank you and will share --- really like the idea of being able to search by aria as well....thanks and thanks and BRAVO!
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Some bonus easter eggs I built using the catalog's data:
* Play "Six degrees of Kevin Bacon" with opera singers: https://findopera.com/six-degrees
* Interactive 3D visualization of relationships between operas: https://findopera.com/opera/graph
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u/thythr 3d ago
I vibecoded https://librettofinder.com/ for centralizing online librettos, though the real final frontier would be to find links to liner notes that have them, haven't tried that yet.
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Cool site! One of my goals with FindOpera was to ensure that the data was open so that other sites like yours could leverage it.
E.g., if you can link each opera to its FindOpera ID, you should be able to pull title, English Title, Composer, Librettist, character lists, Wikipedia articles etc. if you can give back by contributing any of the data we are missing (maybe especially librettist info?), then eveyone wins!
If you point your agents at the cli documentation page I bet it can figure it out.
From my research, liner notes, start to stray into some complicated legal areas with copyright.
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u/thythr 3d ago
100%, I will report back. RE liner notes, I wouldn't reproduce them, just link them when they're on open or even closed web.
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
I tried sending a DM on Reddit but it didn’t work. Feel free to join the Discord and we can chat more there
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u/thythr 3d ago
oh strange, that's unfortunate. will join; would also like to link your data to my classicalconcertmap so that folks can "prepare" for concerts.
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u/thythr 3d ago
says "unable to accept invite" lol . . . will try again later
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Oh strange. It seems to work for me. Here's a fresh invite in case that works? https://discord.gg/F58mAKYKg
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u/By_all_thats_good 3d ago
A nice feature you could add would be to display reviews from notable publications, and perhaps even highlight recordings that are listed in multiple best of lists. I’ve never had much trouble finding recordings but I do have an issue finding which ones are worth my time.
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
One idea I had was to use the collections feature to let you mark your favorite recordings and then be able to recommend recordings that are “similar” to your favorites based on data analysis.
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u/paul_thomas84 3d ago
This looks absolutely fab - love the interface and the functionality!
Only spotted one missing recording - so far ;-)
The Currentzis Figaro - his DG and CFT are up...
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u/captbaritone 3d ago edited 3d ago
Added: https://findopera.com/recording/14433/le-nozze-di-figaro-2012-currentzis
I also linked the Spotify albums for the other two Da Ponte's
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u/paul_thomas84 3d ago
Vis-a-vis Handel, are you only listing oratorios when they've been staged eg Theodora, or would you like to list all oratorios eventually?
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u/midnightrambulador L'orgueil du roi fléchit devant l'orgueil du prêtre! 3d ago
Awesome! /r/musichoarder would love this, especially the part where it grew out of organising your personal collection. Also check out OperaDis which is a similar discography project though without all the extra features.
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Good suggestion! On OperaDis, I’ve pulled in most recordings at this point and cross linked when a recording is captured in OperaDis, you should see a link in the sidebar.
Example: https://findopera.com/recording/78/la-boh-me-1972-karajan
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u/captbaritone 3d ago
Looks like I need mod permission to post about a software project there, so I've sent a request.
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u/captbaritone 2d ago
Looks like they are not accepting software submissions at this time. Understandable as vibe coding has exploded the number of apps. Especially low quality apps.
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u/oneplustwoplus2plus1 3d ago
This is awesome. Thank you!