Robert Tuggle, who as the longtime archivist of the Metropolitan Opera helped create a digital database that includes details from every performance since the Met opened with Gounod’s “Faust” on Oct. 22, 1883, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 83.

The cause was complications of a stroke, his partner, Paul Jeromack, said.

Mr. Tuggle was the opera’s director of archives for more than 34 years and the author of “The Golden Age of Opera,” published in 1983, with photographs by Herman Mishkin. At his death, he was working on a biography of Kirsten Flagstad, the Norwegian-born Wagnerian soprano.

Mr. Tuggle was named archivist in 1981 after being director of education for the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a membership organization that supports the Met.

Robert Aubrey Tuggle was born in Martinsville, Va., on April 17, 1932. His father, Howard Irvine Tuggle, was a Coca-Cola bottling company executive. His mother was the former Margaret Roper.