Costume design by Oliver Messel for Sarastro in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute, Glyndebourne 1956.

A costume design by Oliver Messel for Sarastro. A full length view of the figure, wearing a white cloak over a gold and orange dress, which reaches to the ankles. He wears a gold headdress and holds a gold staff on the left. A six-pointed gold star around his neck.

Acquired with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund and the Friends of the V&A

The Magic Flute (1791), an opera in two acts by Mozart with libretto by Schikaneder from Christoph Martin Wieland’s Lulu, or, The Magic Flute. Oliver Messel’s production was first performed at the Royal Opera House, London, by the Covent Garden Opera Trust on 20 March 1947. It was directed by Malcolm Baker-Smith and featured Kenneth Neafe as Tamino and Victoria Sladen as Pamina. This was the first opera that Messel designed. Messel created new costume and set designs for a Glyndebourne production, first presented 19 July, 1956. Directed by Carl Ebert, Ernst Häefliger played Tamino, Pilar Lorengar was Pamina and Drago Bernardic was Sarastro.
Lord Snowdon, Oliver Messel's nephew, inherited Messel's theatre designs and other designs and artefacts. The designs were briefly stored in a disused chapel in Kensington Palace before being housed at the V&A from 1981 on indefinite loan. The V&A Theatre Museum purchased the Oliver Messel collection from Lord Snowdon in 2005.

Historical significance: Oliver Messel's first costume and set designs for an opera production was in 1947; however, this design is probably for the Glyndebourne production of 1956, during Messel's run as a Glyndebourne theatre designer from 1951 to 1959.

A newspaper article indicates that this design is for the 1956 Glyndebourne production, as opposed to the 1947 production.

Reason For Production: Commission

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.

Messel designed two versions of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute (1791), at Covent Garden Opera Trust (1947) and at Glyndebourne (1956), for which he adapted his designs from 1947. These productions were two of the first three stagings of this opera after the end of World War II. Some reviewers found his designs elegant and a fantastic spectacle; however, others found the designs too fussy and elaborate for the small Glyndebourne stage.

According to a newspaper reporter (Daily Telegraph, 1 June 1956), Messel’s costume for Sarastro, the High Priest of the Temple of Isis and Osiris, was inspired by African priest’s robes he saw on a visit to Uganda in 1955, the year before designing The Magic Flute for Glyndebourne.

S.161-2006