OperaSampo – Opera and Music Theatre Performances in Finland 1830–1960

Annastiina Ahola (Aalto University)

The Reprises database of Sibelius Academy contains information on opera and music theatre performances performed in Finland from 1830 to 1960 as well as on compositions and people related to performances (e.g., musical performers and composers). The Reprises database offers some search functionality to browse and filter the data, but lacks the functionality for making more complex searches. The database also has no integrated data-analytic tools that could be used for analyzing the data in the database and its future is uncertain due to running on legacy software. The OperaSampo project (2023-) was launched to solve these issues. The goal was to produce a new Linked Open Data (LOD) version of the data to replace the old database data as well as a semantic portal for searching and exploring this newly created Linked Data (LD).

In this presentation, I present the data on opera and musical performances that was turned into LD format as well as the new OperaSampo portal for exploring the aforementioned data. I also present example cases of what previously couldn't easily be searched from the data and what opportunities the new portal and data could offer for research on opera and musical performances.

Project webpage

Aalto HELDIG DH pizza seminar on Friday 12 May 2023 at 12.00.