Viktor & Rolf Design Costumes for Opera

Avant-garde Dutch fashion designers Viktor & Rolf—who have a gorgeous new interactive website complete with enchanting musical score—have created costumes for Robert Wilson's adaptation of the romantic opera Der Freischütz (The Freeshooter) by Carl Maria von Weber. The project is a natural extension of Viktor & Rolf's penchant for the surreal, the outrageous and the dramatic, as well as their runway shows staged as spectacles or performance art productions. The duo used almost one million Crystallized™ Swarovski elements to create the garments. This marks their second costume collaboration with Wilson—in November 2004 they created looks for 2 Lips and Dancers and Space for the Netherlands Dance Theatre.

According to Vogue.co.uk, the wardrobes for the soloists of Der Freischütz will take the form of "3D constructions in bright saturated hues and words emblazoned across the front of panels and shoulders, while the choir will adopt traditional German inspired costume - think dirndls and lederhosen." The image above left is Viktor & Rolf's whimsical floral design—"she will be a huge singing bouquet of flowers"—for the character Agatha, played by Juliane Banse.

The opera premieres at the Festspeilhaus Baden-Baden in Germany on May 30, 2009. For more images of the stunning costume collaboration as well as a Q&A with the designers, see the post from The New York Times' Blog The Moment.