Lot 333 Dα

The Metropolitan Opera of New York, the “Met”, was founded in 1883 and was located at Broadway and 39th Street until 1966. In that year the opera moved into the newly built Lincoln Center, together with other cultural institutions. In 1964 Marc Chagall was commissioned by the board of directors of the Met to create two gigantic murals, “The Triumph of Music” and “The Sources of Music”, which adorn the lobby of the opera house. He additionally received a commission to design the stage sets and costumes for the production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's “Zauberflöte” that was presented at the Met from February 1967 onwards. The artist had already provided the designs for various ballet and opera productions since the 1940s, for example, “Aleko” by Leonid Massine for the Ballet Theatre of New York and Stravinsky's “Firebird” for the Met. In 1963/64 he also created the large ceiling painting in the auditorium of Paris's Operá Garnier. The poster motif for the “Zauberflöte” derives from a detail of the design sketch for the wall painting “The Sources of Music”. In that work Chagall united thematic aspects from Mozart's opera with motifs from the Bible, and this is also apparent in the paradisiacal scenery of the poster motif.