It takes an art director to make a classic. Bob Ciano was art directing Opera News for three and a half years in the late 1960s and made its covers* a showcase for great illustration. Published for members of the Metropolitan Opera Guild in New York, the magazine cost just 35 cents, but its covers were worth a million bucks. Ciano was the conductor of an ensemble of superb illustrators, including Stanislaw Zagorski and Milton Glaser, whose artworks were preludes to choruses of articles inside. Ciano talks a bit about this early stage of his long and illustrious career on the Long Live Print / Print Is Dead podcast,
Ponchiellis Gioconda by Stanislaw Zagorski
Veri’s Otello by Stanislav Zagorski
Mozart by Robert Ziering
Mozart by Robert Ziering
La Bohéme by Maxine Clement
Madame Butterfly by Virginia Fritz
Schoenberg’s Voice in the Wilderness vy Stanislaw Zagorski
Parsifal Act II by Sam Kirson
L’Elisir d’Amoree by Ralph Pinto
Tamino’s Flute by Ralph Pinto
Verdi’s Violetta by Milton Glaser
Verdi’s Duke by Milton Glaser
*Thanks to Mirko Ilic.