Pier Luigi Pizzi (Stage Director)
Born in Milan on 15 June 1930. He graduated from the Faculty
of Architecture of Milan’s Politecnico. He started working
as scenographer in 1951. He collaborated with Giorgio Strehler,
Giorgio de Lullo, Luca Ronconi. As scenographer he participated
in over 350 productions worldwide.
He made his opera director
debut in 1977: with a production of Don Giovanni for
Turin’s Teatro Regio. Pizzi’s production of Aida opened the
Wortham Center, Houston in 1987. In 1990, Opera Bastille opened after
reconstruction with Pizzi’s production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens.
Since 1982 he has been making regular appearances at the
Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, with productions of little-known operas
by Rossini, from Tancredi to La pietra del paragone.
In 2000 he won his seventh Italian Critics Abbiati Prize for
the best lyrical production of the year, with his Britten’s Death
in Venice for the Teatro Carlo Felice di Genoa, and later
at the Comunale di Firenze. Ancona’s Teatro delle Muse reopened with
a Pizzi production of Idomeneo. Later on for the same
Theatre he did Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers which won another
Abbiati prize and, more recently, Hindemith’s Neues Vom Tage.
He produced Massenet’s Thais, Auber’s Le domino
noir, and Bizet’s Les pecheurs de perles for the Teatro Maria
Malibran, Venice, and Rossini’s Maometto II, Mayerbeer’s
Il Crociato in Egitto for La Fenice; Handel’s
Rinaldo for La Scala; La Traviata and Britten’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Madrid’s Teatro Real; a new
revolutionary production of Un Ballo in maschera for the
Piacenza-Expo Exhibition Center; Rossini’s Semiramide for Rome Opera;
Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims for the reopening after
reconstruction of L’ Opera di Montecarlo.
As scenographer
he took part in a production of Salieri’s Europa
riconosciuta for the inauguration (following reconstruction),
in December 2004, of La Scala. He was also in charge
of the project for reconstructing the La Scala Museum.
In addition, Pier Luigi Pizzi has designed many major exhibitions.
In 2004 he produced Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann
and, in 2005, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier for the Sferisterio Arena
in Macerata, while for the Teatro Lauro Rossi (also Macerata) he did
a production of Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tiresias and
Marco Tutino’s Le bel indifferent. From 2006-2012 he
was artistic director of the Sferisterio (Macerata) Opera Festival.
For Madrid’s Teatro Real he did a production
of Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo in collaboration with William
Christie et les Arts Florissants (2008). This was followed in 2009
by ll ritorno di Ulisse in patria and,
in 2010, by L’inconorazione di Poppea.
He produced Franz Lehar’s Die Lustige witwe for
La Scala, G. Marschner’s Der Vampir for the Teatro Communale
di Bologna,Korngold’s Die Tote Stadt for La Fenice and
Palermo’s Teatro Massimo, Sasha Guitry’s musical comedy Mozart with
music by Reynaldo Hahn for the Spoleto Music Festival.
Among Pier
Luigi Pizzi’s many awards are: Knight of the Legion d’honneur and order
of Arts and Letters (France), Order of Merit of the Italian
Republic, Commander of the Order of Cultural Merit (Monaco).
|