Historic Opera

ADOLFO HOHENSTEIN

Adolfo Hohenstein (St. Petersburg: 1854-?) was born in Russia of a German family. After he settled in Milan he was a set designer at La Scala before being engaged by the Ricordi Publishing company in 1889 as a poster and frontispiece designer. His Edgar poster was his first known work in that capacity. Opera was a national past time in Italy and Ricordi published hundreds of opera-themed postcards that the public collected and mailed with fervor. The best of their efforts were postcards from the designs of Hohenstein and Metlicovitz. The La Bohème set, attributed to Hohenstein, no doubt coincided with the premiere of Puccini's piece. However, the earliest date that I can positively attribute to this set is October of 1897. These cards are highly collectible and expensive. This set is numbered 007 through 014. One of his other postcard sets is of Mascagni's neglected masterpiece, Iris. Hohenstein was also responsible for the macabre deathbed sketches of Verdi drawn at various hours.

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Puccini's La Bohème (Samples in above slide show):

Note: The earliest Hohenstein Bohème postcards (1897) have undivided backs. There were additional printings of these cards. Cards printing around 1899 still are undivided. Some of the cards have the numbers on the front left margin, some (from different printings) have the number on the address side. Some of these cards can be found with advertisements on the address side. Subsequent printings after 1899 seem to have divided backs with numbers.

The numbers include:

• 007 - Act I - Mimi - Chi sono?
• 008 - Act II - Musetta - Quando me n'vò
• 009 - Act III - Rodolfo - La mia stanza
• 010 - Act IV - Schaudard et al - Mentre incalza
• 011 - Act I - Benoit - Affitto
• 012 - Act II - Street vender
• 013 - Quadro III - La barbiera d'enfer
• 014 - Act IV - Colline - ecchia zimarra

Mascagni's Iris (Hohenstein & Mataloni designs - samples in slide show above)

The Hohenstein postcards can be found in two publishing runs. The first runs had plain backs, and subsequent runs had divided backs with the "Cartolina Postale" heading and with the publisher's name (G. Ricordi & C., Milano). Now to add a bit of confusion to the matter, there is also an Iris 6-card nouveau set published by Ricordi with artwork done by another noted artist, Giovanni Mario Mataloni (1869-1944). The original Mataloni set had plain backs as well. Both sets were originally published in 1898. The two sets were coordinated efforts, so the collector should attempt to acquire all 12 cards, preferably of the earlier runs.