Elemer Nagy, expert in every phase of opera production, from stage direction to scenic design, lighting, and costuming, led his young students at the Hartt School into opera as drama. Singers became actors. Opera came alive as theater. With Moshe Paranov, Music Director, the Hartt Opera Department, later known as Hartt Opera-Theater, gained wide acclaim during Elemer Nagy's twenty-nine years as Stage Director and Designer.

A native of Hungary, Dr. Nagy studied acting, directing, and design in Budapest and Vienna. His belief that One must learn tradition but interpret it in the light of today guided him in his work at Hartt, Aspen, and elsewhere, from New York City to San Francisco, Toronto to Mobile.

Internationally known as a stage director and designer, Dr. Nagy's teaching assignments, lectures, writings, and honors are too numerous to mention. His Multi-Screen Scenery Projection System, the rear projection of slides of theatrical settings, created worldwide interest and was especially useful on Hartt's European tour in 1962.

This special collection comprises nineteen linear feet of Dr. Nagy's papers, writings, scrapbooks, photos, and publicity; all of his notes and sketches for props, light, and sets; beautiful programs he designed for the operas produced at Hartt; photos of operas (8 x 10 b/w's); negatives of pictures he took of opera productions; and slides of the productions. There are also thirty-four large archival storage boxes of his original renderings in water color of the sets and costumes which were used as guides for those persons building the sets and making the costumes at Hartt; information on productions not at Hartt is also available