Paolo Fantin Set designer

Paolo Fantin was born in Castelfranco and earned a degree in scenography and stagecraft from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice.

In 2004, he began collaborating with Damiano Michieletto. In 2011, his sets for Madame Butterfly (Turin’s Teatro Regio), Sigismondo (Pesaro’s Rossini Festival) and Don Giovanni (Venice’s La Fenice) earned him the coveted Franco Abbiati Music Critics’ Prize. In 2005, he designed the sets for the world premiere production of Marco Tutino’s Beauty and the Beast in Modena. 

Still with Damiano Michieletto, he created the scenography for La Gazza ladra (Pesaro Festival, which earned the 2008 Abbiati Prize for staging), Nino Rota’s Il Cappello di paglia di Firenze (Genoa), Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O (Lugo Opera Festival), Das Land des Lächelns (Trieste), Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Corsaro, Luisa Miller, Poliuto (Zurich), Romeo and Juliet (La Fenice), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Naples), La Scala di seta (Pesaro Festival, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia), Sigismondo and La Donna del lago (Pesaro), Don Giovanni, Le nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte (La Fenice), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Geneva’s Grand Théâtre), Madama Butterfly (Turin), L’elisir d’amore (Valencia, Madrid), Così fan tutte (sets and costumes, Tokyo), Martinů’s The Greek Passion (Palermo), Il trittico (Theater an der Wien, Copenhagen Opera), La Bohème, Falstaff (Salzburg Festival), Un ballo in maschera (Milan’s La Scala), The Rake’s Progress (Leipzig Opera), Guillaume Tell, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci (London’s Royal Opera House), Otello (Theater an der Wien), Cinderella (Berlin’s Komische Oper), Samson et Dalila, Don Pasquale (Paris Opera), Aquagranda (a world premiere production by Filippo Perocco) and Die Lustige Witwe (Venice’s La Fenice), Il viaggio a Reims and Rigoletto (Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam), Die Zauberflöte (Florence and Venice), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Theater an der Wien), La Donna del lago (the Royal Opera of Wallonia), and Der ferne Klange (Frankfurt).

Paolo Fantin has also worked in Italy with Stefano Patarino on Britten’s The Little Sweep, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, and with Paolo Valerio on the play Sette piani, based on the work by Buzzati. He also paired up with Andrea Bernard for La Scala di seta.

Projects:
Alcina at the Salzburg Festival.