Sets Designer


After working as an architect in Italy and abroad, Rinaldo Olivieri (1931-1998) entered set designing for the Arena di Verona, for the Theatre Royale de Wallonie in Liège, for the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg, and for the Olympic Pool in Tokyo, for the great spaces of the Messe in Frankfurt, then in Berlin, Vienna and, in his late years, in Ljubljana and Cyprus. In particular, he has been Staging Manager at the Arena di Verona from 1987 to 1991, he designed Nabucco by Verdi in 1991, the recalling of the historic 1913 Aida and Carmen by Bizet in 1993.
As for the Teatro Filarmonico in Verona, he designed the sets for Bucchi’s Laudes Evangelii and Prokofiev’s Figliol Prodigo ballets, and for La Figlia di Iorio by Roberto Hazon, Pagliacci by Leoncavallo, Otello and Il Trovatore by Verdi.

In 1998, in Germany, he designed a theatre in Oberhausen city centre, and the sets for the musical The Lord of the Rings in Berlin. In the same year there has been the opening of the Teatro Camploy in Verona, a project already designed by Olivieri in 1982.
It is obviously important to mention the well-known architectural sculpture of the shooting star, which frames the Arena di Verona on Christmas time, every year since 1984.

His historic set designs of Nabucco relive on the occasion of the 89th Opera Festival 2011.