Costume Study for Konstanze in the "Abduction from the Seraglio" by W.A. Mozart
ca. 1830–50
Medium
Watercolor, over graphite, gum arabic
Dimensions
Sheet: 11 3/16 × 7 15/16 in. (28.4 × 20.2 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Brooke Russell Astor Bequest, 2013
Accession Number
2013.219.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate costume study depicts Konstanze, the noble heroine of Mozart’s 1782 singspiel *Die Entführung aus dem Serail* (The Abduction from the Seraglio). Created between 1830 and 1850 by Johann Georg Christoph Fries and Angelo Quaglio, the drawing likely served as a design for a nineteenth-century revival of the popular opera. Konstanze’s story—a European woman held captive in a Turkish harem—offered designers rich opportunities to blend exotic fantasy with period elegance, reflecting the era’s fascination with Orientalist themes on European stages. Executed in watercolor over graphite w...
About the Artist
Johann Georg Christoph Fries|Angelo Quaglio (German|German) · 1788 |1829 –1857 |1890
German, Nuremberg 1788–1857 Regensburg|German, Munich 1829–1890 Munich