The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
Federal Music Project presents the comic opera "Die fledermaus" - "The bat" by Johann Strauss
Work Projects Administration, Federal Music Project, 1938
What it is
A color silkscreen theater poster from the Work Projects Administration's Federal Music Project, advertising Johann Strauss II's comic opera "Die Fledermaus" ("The Bat"). The designer went unnamed on the sheet; the Library of Congress dates it to the run of the project, 1936-1941.
Why it matters
The Federal Music Project put unemployed musicians back to work during the Depression, staging opera in ordinary places -- this one played the San Bernardino High School auditorium, not a grand house. The poster is government-funded culture sold to a local audience, and its unsigned silkscreen is exactly the kind of quick, cheap, made-to-order work the WPA poster shops turned out by the thousand.
What to notice
One idea, one image: a bat spread across the sheet does all the work, the sort of single-motif solution silkscreen rewarded when every added color meant cutting another stencil and running another pass.
Opera for the price of a school-night ticket, announced by a bat.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Work Projects Administration, Federal Music Project, 1938
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98517704 (cph.3f05521)
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
