Luisa Spinatelli

Luisa Spinatelli trained as a set and costume designer at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Brera, Italy, where she now teaches. Her first stage design was for the ballet Francesca da Rimini at La Scala, Milan, in 1965. She quickly gained recognition in theatre and opera, designing sets for productions such as Attila (1975), La Forza del Destino (1978), Andrea Chénier (1982), and Feodora (1993), all staged at La Scala. At the Teatro Regio in Turin, her work included Kiss Me, Kate (2001) and Orleanskaja Deva (2002), while for the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, she designed the set for Luisa Miller (2003).

However, ballet has always remained her primary domain. In 1976, her designs brought The Nutcracker to life in the Arena di Verona, and she later reimagined this classic for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 1999 and the Tulsa Ballet in 2002. She created sets and costumes for Robert North's choreography of Orlando at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, for the Royal Opera House Covent Garden's 2003 production of The Sleeping Beauty, Pierre Lacotte's Paquita at Moscow's Bolshoi Theatre, a production of Pique Dame at the National Theatre Tokyo, and George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream at La Scala.

Her work on Swan Lake, choreographed by Patrice Bart in 1997 for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, earned her the Benois de la Danse award. In 2005, she received the Premio Akiko Tachibana for her designs for Raymonda in Tokyo.

Spinatelli has collaborated with Patrice Bart for many years, most recently in 2017 on the ballet Sissi, Empress of Austria for the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb.