Eugene Berman

In 1949, the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida purchased and reconstructed the world-renowned Asolo Theater, which had been dismantled in 1930 and stored in Venice for almost twenty years. For the opening performance on 26 February 1952, A. Everett Austin, Jr., the museum's director, selected two short eighteenth-century operas. One was "La Serva Padrona" (The Maid Mistress) by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (1710-1736). The costumes and stage-sets were designed by the Russian-born American painter Eugene Berman, who had received his first commission for the stage from "Chick" Austin at the Hartford Athenaeum in 1936. Pergolesi's "La Serva Padrona", premiering in Naples in 1733, was originally written as an intermezzo, a short comic piece to be performed during the intermissions of a longer, "serious" opera. Generally acknowledged as Pergolesi's best work, "La Serva Padrona" surpassed its more serious counterparts and became the template upon which future opera buffas, or comic operas, were based. The opera follows the maid mistress Serpina's elaborate schemes to win the hand of her master, the curmudgeonly bachelor Doctor Pandolfo, here pictured in Berman's costume design. Berman depicts Doctor Pandolfo in an elaborate and exotic costume, punctuated by the recurring motif of skull and cross-bones and a monumental cap. The full-length costume study is accompanied by two smaller details of Pandolfo's cantankerous visage and pirate-like cap. This costume study is accompanied by a second sheet depicting Pandolfo from behind, also gifted to the Morgan from the McCrindle Collection. -Rory O'Dea, 2009