Sketch book owned by Sophie Fedorovitch, working out ideas for Gluck's opera "Orpheus" and Andrée Howard's ballet "Veneziana", both produced in 1953.

Notebook, spiral bound at side edge containing sketches and ideas for costumes and sets, mostly variations on stage settings using lyres and harps, with some architectural settings and one of trees. Some pages of notes relating to colour. Ballpoint pen.
Attached to the front cover are three photographs of the top of an arch in a collonade, with drawn-up blinds. This idea recurs in some of the drawings in the group of notebooks.

Given by Maude Gosling

One of three notebooks (S.650-2001, S651-2001, S.652-2001) used by the stage designer Sophie Fedorovitch to work out ideas for the last productions she was to design, Gluck's opera "Orpheus" for the Royal Opera House and Andrée Howard's ballet "Veneziana" for the Sadler's Wells Ballet at the Royal Opera House, both premiered in 1963. Fedorovitch died before the first night of "Orpheus".
In the sets for "Orpheus" lyres and harps were used as a recurrent motif, the lyre for the tomy of Eurydice and in the finale, harps for the underworld and, particularly, flanking the stage for the Dance of the Blessed Spirits. The Museum has the set model for the Dance of the Blessed Spirits scene (E.5419-1958) and costume designs in the Buckle gift.
"Veneziana", as indicated by the title, had a Venetian theme, and was primarily a divertissement. There are five finished costume designs for the ballet in the collection (S.1893-1986; S.1894-1986; S.1895-1986; S.1896-1986; S.1897-1986).
The notebook came to the Museum as part of a gift from the dancer Maude Lloyd, who was a close friend and colleague of Andrée Howard.

Historical significance: Theatre designers sketchbooks are comparatively rare and this sequence of three are especially significant in being the ideas for the last productions on which Sophie Fedorovitch, one of the finest theare and ballet designers of the first half of the 20th century, worked. The production of "Orpheus" had a particular poignancy; not only did Fedorovitch die before the first night, it was the last performances of Kathleen Ferrier, who sang Orpheus.

S.651-2001