The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
"Carmen"
Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration, 1939
What it is
A 1939 silkscreen theater poster announcing a Federal Music Project production of Bizet's opera "Carmen." The maker went unrecorded, working inside the WPA poster division.
Why it matters
The Works Progress Administration put artists on the payroll and sent them to advertise the government's own concerts and plays, and the Federal Music Project needed sheets fast and cheap. Silkscreen was the answer: a small shop could pull vivid, flat-color posters in short runs without a commercial press. This is a Depression-era public opera speaking to a passing street audience, not a collector.
What to notice
A single matador carries the whole announcement, doing the job an opera-house marquee usually does and naming the setting and the danger before you read a word.
One figure, and Seville arrives.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration, 1939
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98517140
Rights: CLEAR. Public domain — U.S. government program work (WPA Federal Art Project), any year. Gated by the poster’s own publication year. Cleared by registry on 2026-07-18.
Format
The full-resolution, color-managed file — restored honestly, yours to print and keep.
Sized to protect print quality — this scan supports sizes up to 18x24" cleanly.
Size
$29.00
