August 11, 2016–January 21, 2017

The Charles Jahant Collection in the Library of Congress Music Division contains nearly 2,000 photographs of opera singers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of which are inscribed to him. Jahant began donating his collection to the Library in 1980, and it remains the largest iconographical collection held by the Music Division. The photographs on exhibit in #Opera Before Instagram: Portraits, 1890–1955 represent a cross section of important singers who performed in the United States. Some artists are presented in formal attire, which would have been used for general publicity and concert appearances, and others are costumed as characters from their operatic repertoire.