Louis-Jean Desprez (Auxerre 1743-1804 Stockholm)

This extraordinarily inventive sheet seems to be the only one to have survived from Desprez’s designs for a production at the Swedish court of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice (Act 2, Scene 1). Gluck himself had produced the French version in 1773 of the Italian prototype, Orfeo ed Euridice, first performed in Vienna in 1762 and an instant success, with a transformative effect on future opera composition. The first night at Drottningholm took place on 11 May 1786, where Desprez’s designs were not well received. The lines of columns, variously composed of intertwined monsters, the capitals embellished with snakes and other fantastical creatures, led to a domed entrance guarded by a winged dragon with gaping mouth and scaly body.