The Sembrich Receives Grant to Restore Opera Costume
The Coby Foundation, one of the leading supporters of the textile arts field has awarded The Sembrich a $30,000 grant to aid in the restoration of Marcella Sembrich’s (1858-1935) iconic Queen of the Night couture opera costume. The gown was first seen at the Metropolitan Opera in 1900, when Sembrich performed in the company’s debut production of Mozart’s operatic masterpiece Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute). The costume, now over 120 years old, is slated as the centerpiece for The Sembrich’s 2024 Centennial Exhibition.
“The Coby Foundation is pleased and honored to aid The Sembrich in its conservation of the Queen of the Night costume,” says Ward Mintz, Executive Director of The Coby Foundation. “The gown is impressive and, after it is restored, will help tell the compelling story about Marcella Sembrich, an icon of opera in America, for decades to come.”
Sembrich’s Queen of the Night was created by Berlin designer Bertha Pechstein. According to Metropolitan Opera Costume Designer Judy Levin, the embroidered metallic stars on the gown allude to an 1816 Berlin production of The Magic Flute, the designs for which were inspired by images from Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign. Sembrich’s spangled gown was mentioned in several newspaper articles as one of the most ornate and expensive costumes of the time, with suggestions that it cost upwards of $1,000 to design and create, equal to approximately $35,800 in today’s dollars.
“We are so grateful to the Coby Foundation for their generosity and support of this important project,” said Lisa H. Hall, President of The Sembrich’s Board of Directors, and a former New York based couturier. “The Queen of the Night gown is arguably one of the most notable and most recognizable textile works in The Sembrich Collection. The Coby Foundation’s generous gift is instrumental in moving this project forward and preserving this unique piece of fashion and theatrical history for future generations.”
The Sembrich’s costume collection contains several complete opera costumes worn by Sembrich during her 40-year operatic career. Robert Tuggle, the former Director of Archives at the Metropolitan Opera, considered The Sembrich’s costume collection as “perhaps the finest surviving example of the grandeur of opera in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.”
The restoration will cost approximately $75,000 and will be completed by Spicer Art Conservation, an upstate New York-based art conservation firm. The project will be overseen by the firm’s full-time principal conservator Gwen Spicer, who has over 25 years of experience in conserving historically significant textile works. Spicer has assisted many museums, institutions, and private collectors with the treatment of artifacts and antiquities for both display and storage.
For more information or to get involved in the effort to restore this unique work, visit TheSembrich.org/costume
