Pier Luigi Pizzi

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Pier Luigi Pizzi (born June 15, 1930 in Milan , Italy ) is an Italian set designer , costume designer and opera director .

Life

Pier Luigi Pizzi completed an architecture degree at the Politecnico in Milan . In 1951, against the will of his skeptical father, he began working at the theater, first around Giorgio Strehler and then at the Teatro Tommaseo in Genoa , which soon brought him together with Giorgio De Lullo and his company Compagnia dei Giovani . Later he worked for years as a stage and costume designer, mainly with the director Luca Ronconi , where he was active in both acting and opera. In 1977 Pizzi made his debut as a director with Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Turin , which was followed by numerous other opera productions, for which he also designed sets and costumes. Today, Pizzi works exclusively on the opera stage in the personal union of director, set and costume designer.

Pizzi has worked at important theaters such as La Scala in Milan , the Burgtheater in Vienna , the Vienna State Opera , the Paris Opera , the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London , the Bavarian State Opera in Munich , the Arena di Verona and the opera houses in Florence , Naples and Palermo , Parma , Reggio nell'Emilia or the Teatro La Fenice in Venice . Pizzi created numerous productions for the Rossini Opera Festival Pesaro , with which he has worked for decades.

As a set designer, Pizzi tends towards designs that precisely define the performance space and include many built elements. The influence of his architecture studies is unmistakable. As a rule, it is about rooms that do not hide their artificiality and are often equipped with stairs, platforms etc. and are mostly subject to constant transformation. He hardly ever strives to achieve a spatial illusion or theatrical realism, and if so, then to counteract the respective performance traditions. That is why Pizzi in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre (directed by Ronconi, Milanese Scala, conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch ) showed apparently lifelike interiors of the nineteenth century that were surrounded by rampant nature and did not hide their artificial theatricality. He repeatedly cites works of the fine arts in his works, for example in Giuseppe Verdi's La forza del destino at the Vienna State Opera (directed by Luigi Squarzina , conductor Riccardo Muti ), where he recreated parts of Francisco de Goya's Los desastres de la Guerra and in the frame of a traditional, multiple ruffled opera curtain of the 19th century. For Ronconi's staging of Die Bakchen at the Vienna Burgtheater, Pizzi again referred to antiquity by making its rediscovery in the Italian Renaissance visible and bringing parts of the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza onto the stage, broken up by a wooden stage portal that was shown from behind .

As an opera director, Pizzi is characterized by a non-ideological approach to the works of the composers. He can come very close to the intentions of the authors and reproduce their visions filtered through his glasses, on the other hand he can also tend to ironic distortions or radical simplifications. Pizzi tends to be cautious when it comes to directing the person; he tends to incorporate the singers into the stage designers and characterize them with simple, mostly color-accentuated costumes made with contemporary materials, which only show their historicity as a quotation.

In 1990 Pizzi opened the newly built Opéra Bastille in Paris with his production of Les Troyens by Hector Berlioz . In December 2004, Pizzi designed the set and costumes for L'Europa riconosciuta by Antonio Salieri for the reopening of the renovated La Scala in Milan, where he worked again with Luca Ronconi for the first time after a break of around twenty years and, as an exception, was only responsible for the furnishings.

In October 2005 Pizzi was appointed artistic director of the Macerata Opera Festival , where he has already worked as a director several times. He will hold this position until 2007.

Pizzi has also appeared as an exhibition designer. In 2004 the Museo teatrale alla Scala in Milan opened with the new facility designed by Pizzi.

Awards

In 2016 he was awarded the Premio Bacco dei Borbone ( Festival della Valle d'Itria ).

Pizzi is a knight of the French Legion of Honor .

Work

(Selection; unless otherwise stated, Pizzi is responsible for direction, set design and costumes)

literature

  • Maria Ida Biggi (Ed.): Pier Luigi Pizzi alla Fenice . Marsilio 2005. 248 pages, 334 illustrations (color, black / white). ( ISBN 88-317-8807-8 )

Web links