The Met to Display Banner by Francesco Vezzoli, 2/8

Artist Francesco Vezzoli has created a unique work inspired by Rossini's comic opera Le Comte Ory that will be displayed inside and outside the Metropolitan Opera in the weeks leading up to the opera's Met premiere. Vezzoli's piece, entitled La Comtesse Ory (After Velázquez), incorporates several of the artist's signatures: needlepoint, Renaissance imagery, stylized tears, and religious iconography. The original work, currently on view on the Grand Tier level of the Met, will be reproduced as a banner and displayed on the façade of the opera house beginning February 8.

La Comtesse Ory (After Velázquez) is the latest work in a series of exhibitions, curated by Dodie Kazanjian, that pairs leading contemporary artists with operas from the Met's season. The work riffs on the central plot device of Le Comte Ory-in which the title character disguises himself as a nun to win the heart of the woman he loves-by conflating a variety of images, including a portrait of Rossini, a nun's habit, and male and female nudes.

Vezzoli, whose work was featured in the 2009 Gallery Met exhibition "Something About Mary," is currently the subject of a solo show entitled "Sacrilegio" at the Gagosian Gallery on West 21st St. The exhibition-his first one-person show at a New York gallery-runs through March 12. La Comtesse Ory (After Velázquez) and its corresponding banner will be on view at the Met through late March; afterward, the work will be made available for sale at the Gagosian Gallery (212-741-1717), with the Met receiving 20 percent of the proceeds.
           
Le Comte Ory has its Met premiere March 24 in a production by Bartlett Sher, conducted by Maurizio Benini and starring Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato, and Juan Diego Flórez. For more information on the Met's contemporary visual arts initiatives, including exhibitions at the Arnold & Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, please visit http://www.metopera.org/gallerymet.

 

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