Costume design for Sapho in Charles Gounod’s opera

On 2 April 1884, the Paris Opéra produced an expanded version of Charles Gounod’s Sapho which had premiered in 1851. According to letters dated from 3 August to 31 October 1883 at the Musée Gustave Moreau, Moreau’s costume designs for Sapho did not result from a commission, but rather a request for advice from Régnier, administrator of the Paris Opéra. During the summer of 1883 Moreau submitted an initial proposal of drawings for the five main characters. His designs were considered too complicated and he followed up with a second series in the autumn. These in turn were used by the Opéra costume designer Eugène Lacoste, who copied Moreau’s drawings.
Pierre-Louis Matthieu lists five studies for the costume of Sappho (Gustave Moreau. Monographie et Nouveau catalogue de l’œuvre dessiné, Paris, 1998, nos. 329-333). One of them, from the Ann and Gordon Getty collection, was recently on the market (Christie’s, New York, 22 October, 2022, lot 126). The present drawing is a tracing of a watercolor now in a private collection (Matthieu, op. cit., no. 329). The title-role in the opera was played by the Austrian mezzo-soprano Marie-Gabrielle Krauss (1842-1906) who may have sat for Moreau.