Costume Study for Konstanze in the "Abduction from the Seraglio" by W.A. Mozart

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 with touches of gum arabic, the sheet captures the luminous fabrics, intricate patterns, and graceful silhouette intended for the character. The translucent washes allow light to play across imagined silks and jewels, while the graphite underdrawing provides precise structural details essential for tailors and seamstresses. Such studies were vital working documents that bridged the worlds of visual art and live performance. Now in the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, this drawing preserves a fleeting moment in the long afterlife of Mozart’s opera, reminding viewers how music, theater, and the decorative arts have long intersected to transport audiences to imagined worlds.

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