Drawing for L’Orfeo (Vessel – Tabulous), 2025, Poster By William Kentridge

William Kentridge 

Drawing for L’Orfeo (Vessel – Tabulous), 2025

Digital print on Monte Carlo paper 300 gsm

90 x 60 cm

Printed in a limited run of 150 (Unnumbered) 

Blind embossed with Glyndebourne logo

Printed by King & McGaw, 2026

£90.00 

Signed Limited Edition

Limited release of 20 (Unnumbered)

Blind embossed with Glyndebourne logo

Signed in red pencil by the artist

Designed by the world-renowned South African artist William Kentridge, this poster marks the artist's directorial debut of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo during this Festival season. Featuring a Japanese ginger jar - in a playful nod to the historic vessels in our Organ Room - the drawing is overlaid onto a dictionary page containing many musical references. The poster follows Kentridge's sustained interest in historic vessels, which appear throughout L'Orfeo as set pieces and projections. Kentridge’s opera and his art share a visual language: an intricate interleaving of live and filmed elements, hand-drawn animations, collages and layering of different media. 

On directing opera, William Kentridge says: ‘I think of the invitation to direct an opera as an invitation to make a drawing in four dimensions. Instead of a sheet of paper, you're given a canvas 15 metres by eight or nine metres. To help you with the drawing, you're given a designer of sets, of costumes, a lighting designer. Also three hours of some of the best music written, maybe ten great singers, and a chorus of 40 extra people to fill the stage when needed, a ready-made libretto, and are invited to take all these elements and make the drawing. It is an irresistible invitation.’