Great Britain’s leading theatre designer from the early 1930s to the mid 1950s, Oliver Messel (1904-1978) won international acclaim for his lavish, painterly and poetic designs informed by period styles. His work spans ballet, drama, film, musical, opera and revue. Messel’s traditional style of theatre design became unfashionable from the mid 1950s onwards, and he increasingly concentrated on painting, interior and textile design, including designing luxury homes in the Caribbean.

Rossini’s opera Le Comte Ory is set in medieval rural France. Countess Adèle is alone with her ladies at Castle Formoutiers while the men are away on a Crusade. Count Ory disguises himself as a hermit and nun to penetrate the Castle so that he can court the Countess. Appropriately, Messel designed medieval costumes and sets for the production at Glyndebourne in 1954, inspired by fifteenth century French and Netherlandish decorative art and paintings.

Messel’s set design is faithful to the medieval period in which the opera is set. The crusading knights are shown departing from Castle Formoutiers on a crusade to the Holy-Land, while the court ladies weep over their departure. Messel’s inspiration for the set included medieval tapestries and medieval French and Netherlandish painting.