Pier Luigi Pizzi (Stage Director)
Pier Luigi Pizzi (born June 15, 1930) is an Italian opera director, set
designer, and costume designer.
Pizzi was born in Milan, Italy, and earned a degree in architecture at the
Politecnico of Milan. Against the will of his skeptical father, he started
working in the theater in 1951 with Giorgio Strehler, and then at the Teatro
Tommaseo in Genoa, which he soon brought together with Giorgio De Lullo and his
theater troupe Compagnia dei Giovani. Later he collaborated for many years as a
set and costume designer with the director Luca Ronconi on both plays and
operas. Pizzi debuted as an operatic director in 1977 with Don Giovanni in
Turin. More opera productions followed, with Pizzi sketching sets and costumes
as well.
Pizzi has worked in major houses including La Scala, the Burgtheater in
Vienna, the Vienna State Opera, the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera House at Covent
Garden, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, and the Arena di Verona, as well as
the opera houses in Florence, Naples, Palermo, Parma, and the Teatro la Fenice
in Venice. He has created numerous productions for the Rossini Opera Festival in
Pesaro, where he has had a working relationship for several decades.
In 1990 Pizzi opened the rebuilt Opera Bastille in Paris with its production
of Les Troyens. In December 2004, Pizzi arranged sets and costumes for L'Europa
riconosciuta (by Antonio Salieri) for the reopening of the renovated La Scala,
where he collaborated again after an approximately twenty year break with
director Luca Ronconi.
In October 2005 Pizzi was appointed as the artistic director of the
Sferisterio Opera Festival in Macerata, where he has already worked as a
director.
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