Orlando, a new opera based on Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, a time-traveling, gender-bending love letter to her aristocratic lover Vita Sackville-West, “is the first opera commissioned from a female composer by the Vienna Opera in its 150 years of existence.” They wanted to get the costumes right, so they commissioned designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, who is a bit busy. She says, “There were 36 main costumes for the principals, plus 106 others for the choruses and other groups. I accepted to do the costumes on condition that … I could use the theme of “Orlando” for the two Paris collections proceeding it.” – The New York Times