Many of the Spring/Summer 2014 collections promise to take you to exotic paradises, with prints of palms, fronds and tropical sunsets populated with pink flamingoes.
Yet the word "exotic" assumes different meanings and can point not just towards tropical paradises, but also towards something excitingly different, or simply forgotten for quite a long time.
If you're looking for something quite exotic and pretty unusual don't go further than costumes for operas based in faraway countries.
The list is long and features among the others Delibes' Lakmé and Puccini's Madama Butterfly or Turandot. For something slightly more obscure, check out these sketches for an opera of Persian subject that Italian freelance journalist and translator Serena Di Virgilio spotted for me at the Music Museum in Bologna.
The sketches (some of them are slightly reminiscent of the drawings Alexandre Benois made for the Ballets Russes' Le Pavillon d'Armide in the early 1900s) are dated around 1740 and they are not accompanied by any further information about the opera in question.
Judging from the date and the subject, they may refer to Siroe, re di Persia (Siroes, King of Persia), an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel, with an Italian-language libretto by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Metastasio's Siroe (the opera premiered in 1728).
The plot revolved around the conflict between the Persian king Cosroe and his son Siroe, with secondary plots involving Emira, the daughter of a king defeated by Cosroe, and hoping to revenge her father, and princess Laodice, both in love with Siroe.
Looking at the sketches and the exquisite details, beautiful colours and elaborate decorations, the name of the opera they were destined to is almost secondary, don't you think so?
All images in this post courtesy and copyright Serena Di Virgilio.
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