Oct 19, 2010 - Sale 2226

Sale 2226 - Lot 255

Price Realized: $ 10,200
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
EISENSTAEDT, ALFRED (1898-1995)
"Premiere at La Scala, Milan." Silver print, 17 1/2x12 1/2 inches (44.5x31.8 cm.), with Eisenstaedt's signature and the edition notations 126/250, in ink, on recto and the title, dates and Time Inc.'s copyright, in pencil, in an unknown hand, on verso. 1933; printed 1994
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Additional Details

Eisenstaedt: Remembrances, 13.

Alfred Eisenstaedt's photographs of ballerinas and sopranos were frequently reproduced in LIFE magazine. In his photograph, Premier at La Scala, the lens has shifted from the performers on stage to the patrons seated in the opulent setting of this grand opera house.

Nestled amidst the 2,800 plush velvet seats, Eisenstaedt hones in on a young girl who's oblivious to the fact she is the focal point of the picture. Seated among the wealthy and cultured elite of Milan, she evinces a sense of interest in her companion. Her sideward glance as well as the busyness of the assembled throng indicates to the viewer that the performance has not yet begun. Despite her young age, she appears self-possessed and at ease in her surroundings, the expansiveness of the setting not overwhelming her. Pictorially, the subject's placement against the curvature of the balcony set against the smaller and less defined audience members also results in a refined aesthetic formality.

The six tiers of La Scala, with their intricate carved moldings, reflect a hierarchy of viewership, as the main floor actually had no seats at all upon its original inception. Yet these intricacies lend a soft and graceful backdrop to a theater in the midst of transition. The electric lights protruding from the façade had once been oil lamps, combining the antiquity of the architecture and of opera itself with the newer technologies of the inter-war era.

In addition to the premiere of the Milan production of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera, Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, Eisenstaedt also photographed backstage. But it is this iconic picture of a privileged milieu that resonates to this day. For mature patrons, an opera premiere was one of the foremost social events of the season. For the subject of the photograph, it signified her coming-of-age and introduction to an extraordinary lifestyle