The Coby Foundation, one of the leading supporters of the textile art field, has awarded The Sembrich in Bolton Landing a $30,000 grant to aid in the restoration of Marcella Sembrich’s iconic Queen of the Night couture opera costume.
Experience music, history, and nature at The Sembrich in Bolton Landing, featuring museum exhibitions and an annual summer festival with an exciting mix of world-class musicians, noted musical scholars, and a free film series. Listed on the National Historic Register, The Sembrich was once the teaching studio of Polish soprano Marcella Sembrich, one of the most famous musicians at the turn of the 20th century. Visitors can discover her storied legacy, which includes over 400 performances at the Metropolitan Opera and faculty positions at both the Juilliard Graduate School and the Curtis Institute of Music.
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.
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. The 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. The Colby Foundation will give The Sembrich $30,000 to restore the costume.
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.”
We are so grateful to the Coby Foundation for their generosity and support of this important project. 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.
Lisa H. Hall, President of The Sembrich’s Board of Directors
The Coby Foundation, located in New York City, funds projects in the textile and needle arts field. Established in 1994 by Irene Zambelli Silverman in honor of her mother, Irene Meladakis Zambelli, it began its grantmaking in 2002, awarding more than $5 million to over 170 projects.
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 here.
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