An open database of 18th century European stage costumes published
The database European Theatrical Costumes of the 18th Century is created by Petra Dotlačilová and is part of the research project "The Fabrication of Performance: Processes and Politics of Costume-Making in the 18th-Century", a collaboration between Stockholm University and Centre for baroque musique Versailles, financed by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).
@Lorette, Patrick, coll.Comédie-Française
The database resembles historical sources from various European archives (Archives nationales de France, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Nationalmuseum, Kungliga Operan, Statens historiska museer/Livrustkammaren etc.) and of various kind: costume sketches, handwritten inventories, programmes of costumes and invoices, and physical garments preserved from the period.
The main aim of the database is to facilitate the research of costumes for characters that appeared on the eighteenth-century theatrical stages in different genres like tragedy, comedy, tragédie en musique, opéra-ballet, opéra comique, pastorale, carrousel etc., to discover their visuality and materiality, and to identify their authors.
Petra Dotlačilová holds a PhD in Dance Studies from the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (2016), and a PhD in Theatre Studies from Stockholm University (2020). In her research, she specialises in European dance history and theatrical costume from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. She now works within the research project Addressing the Night in Theatrical Music, 1500-1800, at the Department of Arts, Media, Philosophy at the University of Basel.
International postdoc in Theatre Studies by Petra Dotlačilová, PhD at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics of Stockholm University, in collaboration with Centre de musique baroque Versailles. The three-year project is supported by The Swedish Research Council. In this research project power and ideology in the 18th century theatre costumes is examined.
