The WPA & the Golden Age · Reading & the Stage
WPA in Ohio Federal Music Project presents Verdi's grand opera "Il trovatore"
Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration (Ohio), 1936
What it is
A 1936 silkscreen theater poster announcing the Ohio Federal Music Project's production of Verdi's grand opera "Il Trovatore." It is a single color print on board, unattributed, made by the WPA's own poster division.
Why it matters
This is New Deal relief made visible: at the depth of the Depression, Works Progress Administration funds put full grand opera on an Ohio stage and paid an artist to advertise it. The Federal Music Project and the WPA poster shops existed to keep musicians and designers working, so the poster is both an ad and evidence of the argument that culture was worth a public wage.
What to notice
Look for the flat, layered fields of a hand-pulled silkscreen, the WPA's workhorse method outside the big commercial print houses.
Grand opera, printed one screen-pull at a time, on the public dime.
Provenance
- School
- WPA — Federal Art Project (United States)
- Format
- Theater poster
- Poster published
- Federal Music Project, Works Progress Administration (Ohio), 1936
- Source
- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division · LCCN 98517169
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
