Beschreibung:

[Samuel Barber] Franco Zeffirelli
Costume design for Octavius Caesar in the 1966 New York Metropolitan Opera House production of Antony and Cleopatra
executed in gouache, gold paint, and textiles on canvas, overall size 63 x 50.8cm, framed and glazed, SIGNED AND DATED BY THE ARTIST ("Zeffirelli / 66"), in pencil, manuscript caption ("Caesar Octavian") to paper label on back of frame, no place, 1966
together with two costume designs for Zeffirelli's 1968 film production of Romeo and Juliet, 1967:
Costume design for Paris in Franco Zeffirelli's 1968 film production of Romeo and Juliet, 1967, pen and ink on a decorative background, overall size 70.8 x 63cm, framed and glazed, SIGNED AND DATED BY ZEFFIRELLI ("Franco Zeffirelli '67"), captioned "Paris", manuscript caption ("Franco Zeffirelli / Romeo & Juliet / Film '67 / Paris") to Wright Hepburn Gallery label to back of frame, light wear to frame
Costume design for "Two Young Capulets" in Zeffirelli's 1968 film production of Romeo and Juliet, 1967, gouache and ink on a decorative background, overall size 42.1 x 49.8cm, framed and glazed, SIGNED AND DATED BY ZEFFIRELLI ("Zeffirelli / 1967"), manuscript caption ("Franco Zeffirelli / Romeo & Juliet / Film 67 / Two young Capulets") to Wright Hepburn Gallery label on back of frame, tiny chip to frame
This richly depicted costume design fully reflects Zeffirelli's lavish creative vision for Barber's opera, the premiere of which went down unfortunately in the annals of opera as a disaster of epic proportions - one infamous incident involving the live entombment of Cleopatra (played by Leontyne Price) in the onstage pyramid. Essentially, Barber and his stage designer Zeffirelli had totally opposing ideas about how to adapt Shakespeare's play, the former wanting to focus on the human tragedy, whereas Zeffirelli was inclined to let his imagination run wild through sumptuous costumes and baroque stage set designs which would show off the performance space at the newly constructed Metropolitan Opera House. As Barber recollected, the "production had nothing to do with what I imagined [...] The Met overproduced it", whilst according to Zeffirelli "Sam was writing a pleasant chamber piece [...] not at all the grand epic we had been anticipating" (quoted in Heyman).
LITERATURE:Cf. https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/264233. For an account of the production, see Barbara B. Heyman, Barber: the Composer and his Music (2020), passim