There's a lot to be excited about in 2020, but the world premiere of Eurydice is definitely at the top of our list. Even though we have to wait until February to hear the brand new music, we decided to give you a first look at the costumes now. Check out the lush wardrobes designer Ana Kuzmanić created, and read what she has to say about all those tiny (and not-so tiny) details.
Eurydice
Eurydice’s wedding dress, which the heroine has seemingly created herself from a vintage piece garnished with flowers and vines, takes on darker hues when she arrives in the Underworld. “Her dress starts to absorb the darkness,” says the designer. “Every new time we see her, the darkness overcomes more and more of her costume. I think it starts out strangely beautiful and becomes really haunting.”
Orpheus Double (The Spirit of Music)
This important character is a metaphor for Orpheus’s music. "I wanted his costume to be playful and whimsical. It’s no accident that the color and silhouette are not too different from the color and silhouette of Eurydice’s original wedding dress—they are the two biggest loves in Orpheus’s life: his art and his betrothed."
Hades
"In the libretto, Hades is described as 'an interesting man.' We decided to give him this first look that makes him seem like someone who loves literature or music, or some fancy art critic—the way he thinks an interesting person would look. We drew from all different kinds of references for Hades, and there are all these elements that make him a whimsical but slightly grotesque, strange figure. He has epic shoulders, because he’s so artsy and posh, and there is a tiny little indication of a tail."
Eurydice
“The opera begins with the two lovers, Eurydice and Orpheus, on the beach. It’s light and sunny. For someone like me—who was born on an island in the Adriatic Sea and who thought that every horizon in the world included beautiful water all around—it's extra romantic. There is an ease to these costumes, which are vaguely inspired by 1950s beachwear.”
Orpheus
“There is a lightness to the fabrics [in the beach scene] and they feature large scale patterns that are fun and whimsical. When people are intensely in love, everything seems shiny and sparkly, so we wanted these costumes to catch the light, kind of like how sand and water catch the sunlight.” Kuzmanić's designs throughout the opera allude to ancient Greece in many ways; note the classically inspired sandals that Eurydice and Orpheus wear.
Little Stone
The first characters Eurydice meets in the underworld are three Stones. “They’re highly ranked in the Underworld, so we wanted them to look fancy. They’re all different, and these little individualities were really fun to design. The little stone has a lot of pebbles on her costume. The stones show emotion, which prompted me to put some living elements on them: moss and little flowers growing from the crevices of their stone surfaces. These costumes are big and bulky, but the singers need to be able to sit on the floor and get up gracefully. It will be an engineering challenge to make that happen, which I imagine will be scary and exciting at the same time.”
Want to see these costumes live in-action? Grab your tickets now.
