Alessandro Carletti

Alessandro Carletti was born in Rome. He studied photography and painting, leading him to discover his passion for lighting design, a knowledge of which he acquired from his father. The latter’s work with Carmelo Bene and other directors gave him his first practical experience of the theatre. By the late 1990s he was working at the Rossini Opera Festival and since then he has focused almost exclusively on opera.

Since 2008 he has worked regularly with the director Damiano Michieletto. Among their most recent productions have been Il trittico, Otello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Theater an der Wien, Un ballo in maschera at La Scala, Il viaggio a Reims and Rigoletto at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Guillaume Tell and Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci (Olivier Award, 2016) at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Die Zauberflöte, Filippo Perocco’s Aquagranda (Premio Abbiati, 2017) and Die lustige Witwe at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Valle-Inclán’s Divine Words and The Threepenny Opera at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Samson et Dalila and Don Pasquale at the Paris Opéra, La donna del lago at the Rossini Opera Festival, La Damnation de Faust at the Rome Opera (Premio Abbiati, 2018) and, in March 2019, Der ferne Klang at the Frankfurt Opera.

Other productions for which Alessandro Carletti has designed the lighting in recent years include Daniele Abbado’s production of Don Carlo at the Vienna State Opera; Pippo Delbono’s production of Cavalleria rusticana at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; Daniele Abbado’s production of Nabucco at Covent Garden and a subsequent production with Federico Grazzini and the video artist Luca Scarzella at the Caracalla Baths in Rome; Silvia Paoli’s production of I Capuleti e i Montecchi on Tenerife and in Bologna; Barrie Kosky’s productions of Semele, La bohème and Candide at the Komische Oper in Berlin; John Turturro’s first operatic production, Rigoletto, in Palermo and Lotte de Beer’s production of Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orléans at the Theater an der Wien.

He was also responsible for lighting the fourth edition of Intimissimi On Ice produced by Balich Worldwide Shows and held in the Arena di Verona in 2017. In 2015 Alessandro Carletti received a Knight of Illumination Award for his work on Guillaume Tell at Covent Garden.