The Paris Opera has learned with great sadness of the passing of the renowned lighting designer Vinicio Cheli. A master of light, he used his sensitivity to illuminate and enhance our repertoire, both operatic and choreographic.

Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, where he studied stage design, Vinicio Cheli began his career in 1974 at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. He then joined the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, where, from 1979 to 1989, he worked with Giorgio Strehler, one of the great masters of European theatre directing, under whose guidance he developed his own style.

His career soon took him to the world’s greatest stages. From the Metropolitan Opera to La Fenice, from the Teatro Real to the Gran Teatre del Liceu, from the New National Theatre in Tokyo to the Arena di Verona, Vinicio Cheli worked on productions with numerous directors, choreographers and stage designers.

A loyal collaborator to many artists, over the years he worked with Peter Brenner, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Klaus Michael Grüber, Hugo de Ana, Werner Herzog, Claudio Abbado, Henning Brockhaus, Andrei Konchalovsky, Mario Gas, Cristina Comencini, Arnaud Bernard, Irina Brook and Lluís Pasqual, among others.

He also left his mark on the Salzburg Festival, the Chorégies d’Orange, the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, where he worked from 1987 to 1991.

His history with the Paris Opera is inseparable from Rudolf Nureyev’s ballets, for which he designed the lighting: Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet in 1984, La Bayadère, the choreographer’s final work, in 1992, and the revised version of The Sleeping Beauty in 1997. Working in close dialogue with the stage designs of Ezio Frigerio, with whom he enjoyed a collaboration spanning several decades, his lighting brought the original atmosphere of these great ballets to life for our audiences.

Deeply connected to the history of both of our theatres, Vinicio Cheli was also involved in the earliest days of the Opéra Bastille, designing the lighting for its inaugural production, Pier Luigi Pizzi’s Les Troyens, in March 1990. This was followed at the Paris Opera by productions as diverse as Pier Luigi Pizzi’s Samson et Dalila in 1991, Klaus Michael Grüber’s From the House of the Dead in 2005, Nicolas Joël’s Mireille in 2009, Lluís Pasqual’s La Donna del Lago in 2010, and Giancarlo Del Monaco’s Pagliacci and Cavalleria rusticana in 2012.

For more than thirty years, Vinicio Cheli was also a longstanding collaborator of the Théâtre du Capitole, working on productions including Die Frau ohne Schatten, Tristan und Isolde, Le Roi d’Ys and Der Rosenkavalier. Richard Strauss’s Salome, directed by Matthias Goerne and conducted by Frank Beermann in 2026, was to be his final production.

Vinicio Cheli also passed on his knowledge of the stage. As a teacher of stage design at the New Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, he trained new generations in a profession whose demands and poetry he understood so deeply.

The Paris Opera extends its deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.

“An essential component of works for the stage, light was, for Vinicio Cheli, a form of writing in its own right. His singular approach to light accompanied our institution for nearly thirty years, from Nureyev’s great ballets to the birth of the Opéra Bastille, and will continue to illuminate the memory of our institution.”

Alexander Neef, General Director of the Paris Opera

“Vinicio Cheli was an artist who knew better than anyone how to bring movement to light. He knew how to enhance our dancers in Nureyev’s ballets, which we continue to admire today. His passing leaves a great void, but his light lives on through the works to which he brought so much beauty.”

José Martinez, Director of Dance at the Paris Opera