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EDWARD GOREY.
“Il Dissoluto Punito, Osia: Il Don Giovanni.” Illustration used for both the opera program
cover and curtain design for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Pen and ink on paper. 157x190
mm; 6
1
/
2
x7
1
/
2
inches, image, on sheet measuring 11x13
3
/
4
inches. Signed in brown ink,
lower right margin, captioned “curtain
1
/
4
”=1’” in black ink, lower right corner,
registration marks and Gorey’s faint erased pencil tracings visible beneath ink. [New
Hampshire;Yarmouthport, 1980].
[3,000/4,000]
A FABULOUS EXAMPLE OF GOREY
’
S METICULOUS HANDWORK
through both the faint underlying
pencil sketches which reveal his attemps to perfect the lettering and spacing, and in the richly inked
shading and textural details of the Gothic wolf’s head and skin border design.
After the great stage director Peter Sellars made his mark withWagner’s Ring Cycle in the late 1970s,
he was invited to produce Mozart’s great opera,“Don Giovanni,” at the Monadnock, New Hampshire
Music Festival. Already marking his career as a daring innovator, Sellars persuaded Gorey, who was
recently celebrated for his brilliant, macabre designs for the Broadway production of Dracula, to create the
sets and costumes for the festival’s Palace Theatre production.The successful performance ran September
20th and 23rd, 1980 with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte; musical direction by James Bolle.
Provenance: Edward Gorey to family of consignor; exhibited, Edward Gorey House,Yarmouthport,
Massachusetts, 2008-10.