I always asked artists whose work I admired, figuring the worst that could happen is that they would say no, though very few did. Most opera photography looked alike and was used more to record the scene and sets.ĭid you have a favorite cover? I love the one with dominated by black with a small circle and a battleship.Īnything by Milton Glaser, Stanislaw Zagorski and Erté. I could give the artists a lot of time, and that helped them say yes. And I knew the cover subjects a year in advance-they were the operas that were broadcast on the radioon Saturday afternoons. It was a way to give the magazine a look. (Side note: The fee was $100 per cover, plus two tickets for the opera that was the subject of the cover art.) I thought the idea of going to famous artists was a good one, and so I adopted the idea, but I didn’t use the rejection form. The one I found was addressed to Alexander Calder. , Your Art work is being returned for the following reasons: _Poor Idea _Lack of ColorĪnd so on. The form was used by a previous art director, Paolo Lionni, son of the famous art director/illustrator Leo Lionni. I had never worked at a magazine before, so I was looking for all the help I could find. The “plan” grew out of a form I found in the files at Opera News. What was your plan for these singular covers? From San Francisco, Ciano told me a little bit about these gems. Ciano was the conductor of an ensemble of superb illustrators, including Milton Glaser, whose artworks were preludes to choruses of articles inside. 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. Bob Ciano was art director of Opera News magazine for three and a half years in the late 1960s.