William Orlandi

Stage and costume designer William Orlandi has to his credit an impressive roster of successful collaborations with prominent opera directors. After studies at Milan’s Accademia di Belle Arte di Brera, he made his debut as set designer at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, with Verdi’s Il trovatore staged by Alberto Fassini, with whom he continued to work in subsequent years on further productions, including Roméo et Juliette in Palermo, Il trovatore and Werther in Tokyo, or Bellini’s La straniera and Norma in Turin. He likewise frequently collaborated with Arnaud Bernard, Giancarlo Menotti and Sir Peter Ustinov. In 1987, with a production in Geneva of Rolf Liebermann’s comedy with music La forêt, began what evolved into his regular creative partnership with stage director Gilbert Deflo, which has to this day yielded around 30 common projects, including productions of Aida in Glasgow, Lausanne and Copenhagen; Falstaff and Otello in Antwerp; Lully’s Roland at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris; Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in Montpellier, Inssbruck and Tokyo, and L’incoronazione di Poppea in Montpellier, Innnsbruck, Antwerp, Milan and Buenos Aires; The Queen of Spades and L’Orfeo in Barcelona; as well as Tosca, Carmen, Faust and Falstaff in Macerata; Otello and Don Giovanni in Karlsruhe; Manon at the Opéra Bastille; La clemenza di Tito and Così fan tutte in Lausanne; Carmen and The Love for Three Oranges in Catania; Reinhard Keiser’s opera Croesus at the Berlin Staatsoper; Massenet’s Don Quichotte at the Opéra Bastille; the same composer’s Thérèse in a double bill with Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Rigoletto and La Gioconda in Zurich; Handel’s Serse at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées; and Smetana’s The Bartered Bride at the Palais Garnier in Paris. Apart from that, he designed the sets for productions of Rossini’s Semiramide at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro; Delibes’ Lakmé in Palermo; and Joseph Rastrelli’s Le donne curiose in Verona.