The Rape of Lucretia: week 2 - week 1
L'enfant et les sortilèges & Gianni Schicchi: week 4 - week 3 - week 2 - week 1
Turandot: week 4 - week 3 - week 2 - week 1
The Italian Girl in Algiers: week 4 - week 3 - week 2 - week 1
Fidelio: week 4 - week 3 - week 2 - week 1

L'enfant et les sortilèges/Gianni Schicchi - Week One

Opera Company of Philadelphia Costume Director Richard St. Clair has created the fascinating designs for the upcoming double-bill of L’enfant et les sortilèges and Gianni Schicchi.  Here are many of his costume sketches for L’enfant, which brings to life a vivid, technicolor world, in contrast to the costumes for Gianni Schicchi, which are much more stark, focusing on black, white and gray—and a cast of vivid, colorful characters.

OCP Costume designer Richard St. Clair demonstrates how he worked with Director Robert Driver to address the major challenge with L’enfant of dressing characters that are supposed to be inanimate objects.  They wanted each character to have the spirit of their object without actually being that object. This dress for the character of The Sidechair, for example, calls to mind the Louis XIV style chair by which it was inspired but is still a wearable item of clothing.

Here is a sketch for the character of The Little Old Man, along with images that Costume Director Richard St. Clair drew inspiration from.  Then Andre, a member of the Opera Company of Philadelphia costume shop, helps to bring this sketch to life.

These sketches by Costume Designer Richard St. Clair are the costumes for Gianni Schicchi, which has a much more muted color palette.

Here Costume Designer Richard St. Clair shows a dress for Gianni Schicchi that is very simple and classic in comparison to the ornate costumes that he has designed to bring inanimate objects to life in L’enfant.

Costume designer Richard St. Clair explains the process of making the dress for the L’enfant character of The Fire.  There are layers of fine fabric that will flow and shimmer, along with separate pieces, or flames, that will be sewn carefully onto the fabric.