Pizzi, Pier Luigi
Pizzi, Pier Luigi
Pizzi, Pier Luigi , distinguished Italian opera producer and designer; b. Milan, June 15, 1930. He was a student of architecture at the Milan Polytechnic. In 1952 he began his career as an opera designer with a production of Don Giovanni in Genoa. In 1959 he staged Handel’s Orlando in Florence and acquired a notable reputation as a producer of Baroque stage works. He produced Verdi’s I due Foscari (1979) and Gluck’s Alceste (1989) and Armide (1996) at Milan’s La Scala, Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie in Aix-en-Provence (1983), Bellini’s Capuleti e i Montecchi at London’s Covent Garden (1984), and Don Carlos in Vienna (1989). In 1990 he oversaw the production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the gala opening of the Opéra de la Bastille in Paris. After staging Otello in Chicago in 1992, he produced the first modern staging of Traetta’s Buova d’ Antona in Venice in 1993. In 1997 he produced Verdi’s Macbeth in Verona. Pizzi’s productions and designs reveal him as a master of stagecraft.
Bibliography
R. Lussan, P.L. P. (Paris, 1994).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire