Berman, Eugene. (1899-1972)

Costume Design for Don Giovanni, 1952

Original Costume Design for Don Juan, by the eminent Russian Neo-romantic painters and theater and opera designers. Ink on paper. Signed and dated E.B. 1952 (lc); inscribed Bride (lr) and Don Juan (uc).  14 3/4 x 11 inches (37.5 x 27.9 cm). Nicely framed. Unexamined out of frame but in apparently fine condition. 

Eugene Berman was one of the world's most acclaimed theatrical designers of his time. Born in Russia, he emigrated first to Paris, and then to America and his career had two parallel strands, one painting and one theatre design, although the two overlapped stylistically. Berman was heavily influenced by nineteenth-century Romanticism and many of his images have a sense of melancholy, of the sublime and of the theatrical.  Though we have not been able to identify a production associated with this 1952 drawing, it is possible the artist was designing without commission. Berman designed the sets and costumes for five productions at The Met under the watch of Rudolf Bing, the General Manager between 1950 and 1972. These were Rigoletto, La Forza del Destino, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni and Otello . All were critically-acclaimed, used for many seasons and marked a high point in the history of theatrical design.  

To design Don Giovanni, in particular, had been a life-long ambition for Berman. In 1941 he wrote to Edward Johnson (an earlier General Manager at The Met): "I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but my great interest in the theatre lies even more in the opera than in the Ballet and my greatest desire is to design a classic or romantic opera, Mozart, Gluck or Verdi. Most of all: Don Giovanni , no opera is more beautiful and complete to me than this.". His desire was fulfilled when Bing wrote to him in October 1956 with an official invitation to design Don Giovanni for the 1957/58 season. The director for the production was Herbert Graf. Over the next year designs for the set and costumes flew back and forth between Berman, Bing and Graf. The opera premiered on 31 October 1957. Berman's dreamlike designs were a triumph and proved so popular in subsequent seasons at The Met that they were only replaced in 1990.   [Tuggle, Robert. Eugene Berman. Drawings for the Stage. Wheelock Whitney & Company. 1989; Duncan, Michael. High Drama. Eugene Berman and the Legacy of the Melancholic Sublime. Hudson Hills. 2004.] (21688)