Yesterday Milan's La Scala inaugurated its opera season with Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, conducted by Daniele Gatti, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov and with costumes by Elena Zaytseva. Yet the 1955 staging of Verdi's opera remains among the most memorable one since it was directed by Luchino Visconti and starred Maria Callas as Violetta.
As pointed out in another post, costumes and sets for that representation were designed by Lila de Nobili.
The designer created for the occasion a strong link between the costumes and the personality of the characters, making sure the oppressive and rigid luxury of the sets and costumes hinted at the hypocrisy and cynicism of the main characters.
Lila de Nobili also worked in the '40s as a fashion illustrator: the last image in this post shows indeed a drawing she did for fashion magazine Les Soirs de Paris (1947) of Schiaparelli and Perre Balmain's gowns.
While this may be a sort of distant relation betwen Schiap and Callas, de Nobili was linked with Schiap also in another way: her uncle was indeed high fashion artist Marcel Vertès who created beautiful modern illustrations and adverts for Elsa Schiaparelli.
In 1952, his fashion designs for John Huston's Moulin Rouge, featuring costumes for Zsa Zsa Gabor by Elsa Schiaparelli, won him two Academy Awards (Best Costumes and Best Art Direction / Set Decoration, the latter shared with Paul Sheriff). Looks like fashion is a small world after all.
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