Rossi
Vittorio. Creator of costumes, set designer, director, writer, playwright, and professor at the University of Paris. He has received numerous international awards, including, in 1987, the Medaille de Vermeille from the City of Paris and, in 1996, the Légion d’Honneur, presented by France’s president, Chirac. After studying architecture at the University of Rome, he began has career as a costume and set designer, working for major film production houses and such directors as William Pabst, Sergio Leone and Duccio Tessari. In the theater, he worked with Giorgio Albertazzi, Maurizio Scaparro, Virginio Puecher, and with La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. He worked intensely in the world of dance, ranging from the creation of sets and costumes for the Racconto Siciliano, conceived by Luchino Visconti, with music by Bucchi, a Requiem per un destino to music by Ennio Morricone (both produced with the Dutch dancer and choreographer Pieter Van der Sloot), to Don Quixote with Rudolph Nureyev and Sleeping Beauty, with Carla Fracci for the Arena in Verona, where he was a consultant for the set design for ten years, also creating unforgettable costumes for Aida, Cavalleria Rusticana, I pagliacci, Turandot, Tosca, and many other magnficent productions. He was acclaimed as a “man of the great spaces,” “sorcier” (wizard), “magique” and “magicienne” (magical and a magician) by the French press, which hailed his direction, set design, and costumes in the Aida that inaugurated in 1984 the Palais Omnisport of Paris-Bercy. He worked on the inaugural performances for the Deutschlandhalle in Berlin, the Stadthalle in Vienna, the Westfallenhalle in Dortmund, the Hallenstadium in Zurich, the Palais des Congres in Strasbourg, and Earl’s Court in London. He designed the sets for the Aida that was staged in Luxor for the 125th anniversary of the inauguration of the Suez Canal. He died in 2003.