The Olga Iglesias Collection
A soprano's personal archive, open to the world at the Digital Library of the Caribbean.
An archive kept for half a century
For decades, Olga Iglesias's personal archive lived in family boxes and albums: letters, telegrams, concert programs, photographs, recordings, and clippings documenting one of the most remarkable careers in Puerto Rican classical music. Since 2020, the Olga Iglesias Project has been digitizing that archive piece by piece and placing it online, freely accessible, for students, researchers, and anyone curious.
What the collection holds
The digitized collection grows month by month. Among its pieces:
Correspondence
Letters, telegrams, and postcards among Olga, Pablo Casals, Alexander Schneider, Marta Casals Istomin, her colleagues, and her family.
Concert programs
From the 1958 Casals Festival debut to the world tour of "El Pessebre": San Francisco, Carnegie Hall, the United Nations, and Athens.
Audio and video
Sound recordings and film of the era, digitized from their original formats.
Photographs and clippings
Never-before-seen photographs alongside press clippings: WAPA television, the Conservatory, and stages on three continents.
Contracts and papers
Contracts and professional documents that show the craft behind a mid-century concert career.
Why the Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) was born in San Juan. It was founded here in July 2004, when librarians, archivists, and researchers from across the region agreed to build a cooperative digital library for the Caribbean. Today it brings together more than sixty institutions, from the national archives of Haiti to the National Library of Jamaica, with millions of pages, free to read and searchable in full text. The University of Florida sustains its infrastructure; Florida International University leads its outreach.
The Olga Iglesias Project is a contributing partner of dLOC. The collection lives there alongside the great archives of the Caribbean, with the long-term preservation this heritage deserves, in a library born in the same city where Olga sang with Casals.
A living archive
The digitization continues: new pieces are added regularly, and this year the collection is consulted thousands of times a month from around the world. A complete archival catalog of the collection is coming soon, with professional descriptions of every series and item.
This work has been recognized by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supported the first comprehensive assessment of the collection, and by the Fundación Puertorriqueña de las Humanidades, which funded a humanist-in-residence dedicated to its study.
Do you have materials?
Do you keep programs, photographs, recordings, or letters from Olga Iglesias's era, the Casals Festival, or mid-century Puerto Rican musical life? We would love to see them. We can digitize them, document them, and, if you wish, add them to the collection credited to your family. The originals always stay with you, unless you decide otherwise.