Coming off a recent Grammy Nomination for the recording of his opera Volpone, he is preparing to open a new comic opera, The Inspector, at Wolftrap this April. He asked if I would create the poster for the show and I believe I had agreed to do it before he finished the sentence.
The Inspector is based on Gogol's The Government Inspector. For the opera, the political satire was reset in in Mussolini's Sicily and as Mark clarified "dictatorship is ALWAYS a ripe situation for comedy!"
The story has a strong theme of questioned identity. Mark had something Magritte-like in mind for the design as well as some reference to themes of corruption and Italian nationalism.I looked to European posters of the period as visual reference. They were such a key medium for propaganda/advertising (same thing, really) for this period that it seemed a good place to start. I illustrated the black suit and fedora to allude very gently to gangster style with it's late 20's silhouette. The refined and more reserved typography, the vest, tie, and white shirt make the figure a bit more of a gentleman or perhaps government official. The corruption theme is hopefully recognized by the lire lining/pocket square details. The focused red and green color palette ideally give it Italian flavor. In the final version the green, white, and red flag stripes in the background give this theme more patriotic power.
I developed about 5 design directions. It came down to the green background with red lire details (shown above) and the Italian flag background with lire in hat. The Italian flag version (shown below left) was ultimately chosen.
The last poster I designed for Mark was in '95 for the musical Splendora (shown below right). This was while I was part of Manville:Bakacs:Santana design firm in NY and is also on my website of work created before 2005 (yellow link and password on the right).
