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).
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